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HU lUUr IO— 



A.bAlLV PuBUC^TlOf/ QfTKe SE^T CJRAENfT C^TANjMfCd Lit^r^tuRE 


Vol. 4. No. 169. Aug. 13, 11*53. Annual Subscription, $60. 


BYRE’S 

ACQUITTAL. 


HELEN MATHERS. 

AUTHOR -a* 

“ COMIN” T.iRO THIS RYE, ’ Ac. 


ntered at the Pont Office, N. Y., as necond-elaHH matter. _ 

Copyright, 183.;, by John W. Lovkll Co. *Fj 


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LOVELL’S LIBRARY. 

CATALOG-UE. 

v*. • 


1. Hyperion, by H. W. Longfellow... 20 

2. Outre-Mer, by H. W. Longfellow. ..tO 
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4. Arne, by Bjdrnson. . 10 

5. Frankenstein; or. the Modern Pro- 

nftetheus, by Mrs. Shelley..., 10 

G. The Last of the Mohicans, by J. 

Fenimore Cooper 20 

7. Clytie, by Joseph Hatton ........ 20 

• 8. The Moonstone, by Collins, P’tlv.40 , 

9. The Moonstone, by Collins, P’tll.lU 

10. Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens. 20 

11. The Coming Race, by Lytton 10 

12. Leila, by Lord Lytton 10 

13. The Three Spaniards, by Walker. .20 

14. The Tricks of the Greeks Unveiled; 

or, the Art of Winning at every 
Game, by Robert Houdin .20 

15. L’Abbe Constantin, by Hal6vy..20 

1G. Freckles, by R. F. Redcliff 20 

17. The Dark Colleen, by Harriett Jay .20 
lt>. They Were Married I by Walter Be- 

aant and James Rice 10 

19. Seekers after God, by Canon Farrar. 20 

20. The Spanish Nun, by Thos. De 

Quincey 10 

21. The Green Mountain Boys, by 

Judge D. P. Thompson 20 

22. Fleurette, by Eugene Scribe 20 

23. Second Thoughts, by Ithoda 

Broughton 20 

24. The New Magdalen, by Wilkie 

Collins 20 

25. Divorce, by Margaret Lee 20 

20. Life of Washington, by Henley.. 20 
27. Social Etiquette, by Mrs. W. A. 

Saville 15 

2S. Single Heart and Double Face, by 

Charles Reade 10 

29. Irene, by Carl Detlef 20 

30. VioeVersa; or, a Lesson to Fathers, 

by F. Anstey 20 


31. Ernest Maltravers, by Lord Lytton. 20 

32. The Haunted House and Calderon 

the Courtier, by Lord Lytton... 10 

33. John Halifax, by Miss Mulock 20 

34. 800 Leagues on the Amazon, being 

Part 1 of the Giant Raft, by 
Jules Verne 10 

35. The Cryptogram, being Part II of 

the Giant Raft, by Jules Verne.. 10 
30. Lifocf Marion, by Horry and Weems. 20 

37. Paul and V irginia . .... 10 

38. Tale of Two Cities, by Dickens. . . .20 

39. The Hermits, by Kingsley 20 

40. An Adventure in Thule, and Mar- 

riage of Moira Fergus, by Wm. 
Black ..10 

41. A Marriage in High Life, by Octave 

Feuillet i. ". . 20 

42. Robin, by Mrs. Parr 20 

43. Two on a Tower, byThomas Hardy .20 

44. Rasselas, by Samuel Johnson 10 j 


45. Alice, or. the Mysteries, being Part 


II of Ernest Maltravers 20 

46. Duke of Kandos, by A. Mat they . . .20 

47. Baron Munchausen 10 

48. A Princess of Thule, by Wm. Black. 20 

49. The Secret Despatch, by Grant 20 

50. Early Days of Christianity, by Can- 

on Farrar, D.D., Part I. . 20 

Early Daysof Christianity, by Can- 
on Farrar, D.D., Part II 20 

51. Vicar of Wakefield, by Oliver Gold- 

smith 10 

52. Progress and Poverty, by Henry 

George 20 


53. The Spy, by J. Fenimore Copper. . . 2ft 

54. East Lynne, by Mrs. Henry Wood.20 

55. A Strange Story, by Lord Lytton. .20 

56. Adam Bede, by*Geo. Eliot, Part I. .15 
Adam Bede, by Geo. Eliot, Part II. .15 

57. The Golden Shaft, by Gibbon. 20 

58. Portia, or. By Passions Rocked, by 


The Duchess 20 

59. Last Days of Pompeii, by Lytton. 20 

60. The Two Duchesses, being the se- 

quel to the Duke of Kandos, by 
A. Mathey 20 

61. Tom Brown’s School Days at Rug- 

by 20 

62. TheWooing O’t, by Mrs. Alexander, 

Part 1 15 

TheWooing 0’t,‘ by Mrs. Alexander, 
Part II 15 

63. The Vendetta, Ta.es of Love and 

Passion, by Honore de Balzac.. 20 

64. Hypatia, by Rev. Kingsley, Part I. .15 


Hypatia, by Kingsley, Part II. ...15 

65. Selma, by Mrs. J. Gregory Smith.. 15 

66. Margaret and her Bridesmaids. .. 20 


67. HorseShoe Robinson, Part I 15 

Horse Shoe Robinson, Part II 15 

68. Gulliver’s Travels, by Dean Swift.. 20 

69. Amos Barton, by George Eliot.. . .10 

70. The Berber, by W. E. Mayo 20 

71. Silas Marne*, by George Eliot.... 10 

72. The Queen of the County 20 

73. Life of Cromwell, by Paxton Hood. .15 

74. Jan o Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte. . .20 

75. Child’s History of England, by 

Charles Dickens.... 20 

76. Molly Bawn. by The Duchess 20 

77. Pillone, by William Bergsoe 15 | 

78. Phyllis, by the Duchess 20 

79. Romola, by George Eliot, Parti... 15 i 
Romola, by George Eliot, Part II. .15 

80. Science iu Short Chapters 20 

81. Zanoni, by Lord Lytton 20 

82. A Daughter" of Heth, by W. Black. 20 

83. The Right and Wrong Uses of the 


Bible, by Itev. R. Heber Ncwton.20 
84 Night and Morning, by Lord Lvtton 

Part I ..15 

Night and Morning, by Lord Lj tton 
Part II 15 


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By EDMOND ABOUT. 

A New Lease of Life 20 

By Mbs. ALEXANDER. 

♦The Wooing O’t, Part 1 15 

“ “ “ Part II 15 

♦The Admiral’s Ward 20 

By F. ANSTEY. 

♦Vice Versa; or, a Lesson to 
Fathers ....20 

By SIR SAMUEL BAKER. 

♦Cast up by the Sea 20 

♦Eight Years Wandering in Ceylon.. 20 
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By HONORE DE BALZAC. 

The Vendetta, Tales of Love and Pas- 
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They Were Married 10 

Let Nothing You Dismay 10 

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♦Lady Audley’s Secret 20 

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An Adventure in Thule and Marriage 

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♦A Princess of Thule 20 

♦A Daughter of Heth 20 

*Shandon Belis 20 

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♦Madcap Violet..-./.. 20 

♦Strange Adventures of a Phaeton. . .20 

* W hite W ings 20 

♦Kilmeny .... 20 

♦Sunrise 20 

♦That Beautiful Wretch... 20 

♦In Silk Attire 20 

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♦Yolande. 20 

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More Words About the Bible .20 

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“ “ Part II 10 

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♦Heart and Science 20 

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♦The Spy 20 

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The Spanish Nun 10 

By CARL DETLEF. 

Irene, or the Lonely Manor 20 

By CHARLES DICKENS. 

♦O’iver Twist 20 

Pickwick Papers, Part 1 20 

“ Part II 20 

♦A Tale of Two Cities 20 

♦Child’s History of England 20 

By “THE DUCHESS.” 

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♦ Molly Bawn 20 

♦Phyllis 20 

Monica 10 

♦Mrs. Geoffrey 20 

♦Airy Fairy Lilian 20 

♦Beauty’s Daughters . .•* 20 

. *Faith and Unfaith 20 

♦Loys. Lord Beresford 20 

Moonshine and Marguerites 10 

By Lord DUFFERIN. 

Letters from nigh Latitudes 20 

By GEORGE ELIOT. 

♦Adam Bede, Part 1 15 

“ “ Part II 15 

Amos Barton. .10 

Silas Marner. 10 

♦Romola Parti 15 

“ Part II 15 


By F. W. FARRAR, D.D. 

♦Seekers After God 20 

♦Early Days of Christianity, Part I.. .20 
“ “ “ “ Part II.. 20 


~ By JOHN FRANKLIN. 

Ameline du Bourg 15 

By OCTAVE FEUILLET. 

A Marriage in High Life 20 

By EMILE GABORIAU. 

♦The Lerouge Case 20 

♦Monsieur Lecoq, Part 1 20 

“ “ Part II 20 

♦The Mystery of Orcival 20 

♦Other People’s Money 20 

♦Tn Peril of his Life 20 

♦The Gilded Clique 20 

Promises of Marriage 10 


By HENRY GEORGE. 
Progress and Poverty 20 

By CHARLES GIBBON. 

♦The Golden Shaft 20 

By OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

Vicar of Wakefield 10 

By Mrs. GORE. 

The Dean’s Daughter 20 

By JAMES GRANT. 

♦The Secret Despatch 20 

By THOMAS HARDY. 

Two on a Tower 20 

By PAXTON HOOD. 

Life of Cromwell 15 

By LEONARD HENLEY 

♦Life of Washington 20 

By JOSEPH HATTON. 

♦Clytie 20 

♦Cruel London 20 

By LUDOVIC HALEVY. 

L’Abbe Constantin 20 


By ROBERT HOUDIN. " 


The Tricks of the Greeks Unveiled. ..20 

By HORRY AND WEEMS. 

♦Life of Marion 20 

By Miss HARRIET JAY. 

The Dark Colleen 20 

By MARION HARLAND. 
Housekeeping and Homemaking 15 

By STANLEY HUNTLEY. 
♦Spoopendyke Papers 20 

By WASHINGTON IRVING. 
♦The Sketch Book 20 

By SAMUEL JOHNSON. 
Rasselas 10 

By JOHN P. KENNEDY. 

♦Horse Shoe Robinson, Part 1 15 

“ “ “ Part II 15 

By EDWARD KELLOGG. 

Labor and Capital 20 

By GRACE KENNEDY. 

Dunallen, Part 1 15 

“ Part II 15 

By CHAS. KINGSLEY. 

♦The Hermits 20 

♦Hypatia, Part I ! . 15 

Part II 15 


By Miss MARGARET LEE. 
•Divorce .20 


By JAMES PAYN. 

•Thicker than Water 20 


By HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. 


•Hyperion 20 

•Outre-Mer 20 


By SAMUEL LOVER. 

The Happy Man 10 

By LORD LYTTON. 

The Coming Race 10 

Leila, or the Siege of Granada 10 

Earnest Maltravers 20 

The Haunted House, and Caldero-n 

the Courtier 10 

Alice; a sequel to Earnest Maltravers. 20 

A Strange Story 20 

•Last Days of Pompeii 20 

Zanoni 20 

Night and Morning, Part 1 15 

“ “ Part II 15 

Paul Clifford 20 

Lady of Lyons 10 

Money 10 

Richelieu 10 

By H. C. LUKENS, 

•Jets and Flashes 20 

By Mrs. E. LYNN LINTON, 
lone Stewart 20 

By W. E. MAYO. 

The Berber 20 


By A. MATHEY. 


Duke of Kandos 20 

The Two Duchesses. 20 


By CHARLES READE. 

Single Heart and Double Face 10 

By REBECCA FERGUS REDCLIFF. 
Freckles .20 

By Sir RANDALL H. ROBERTS. 

Harry Holbrooke 20 

By Mrs. ROWSON. 

Charlotte Temple 10 

By W. CLARK RUSSELL. 

•A Sea Queen 20 

By GEORGE SAND. 

The Tower of Percemont .2 q 

By Mrs. W. A. SAVILLE. 

Social Etiquette 15 

By MICHAEL SCOTT. 

•Tom Cringle’s Log ....20 

By EUGENE SCRIBE. 
Fleurette 20 

By J. PALGRAVE SIMPSON. 
Haunted Hearts 10 

By GOLD WIN SMITH, D.C.L. 

False Hopes 15 

By DEAN SWIFT 
Gulliver’s Travels 20 


By JUSTIN H. MCCARTHY. 


An Outline of Irish History 10 

By EDWARD MOTT. 

•Pike County Folks 20 

By MAX MULLER. 

•India, what can she teach us? 20 

By Miss MULOCK. 

•John Halifax 20 

BY R. HEBER NEWTON 
The Right and Wrong Uses of the 
Bible 20 

By W. E. NORRIS. 

•No New Thing 20 

By OUIDA. 

•Wanda, Part I 15 

Part II 15 

•Under Two Flags, Parti 20 

“ “ Part II 20 


By W. M. THACKERAY. 

•Vanity Fair, Part 1 15 

*• “ “ II 15 

By Judge D. P. THOMPSON. 
•The Green Mountain Boys 20 

By THEODORE TILTON. 

Tempest Tossed, Part 1 20 

* “ Part II. 20 

By JULES VERNE. 

*800 Leagues on the Amazon 10 

•The Cryptogram 10 

By GEORGE WALKER. 

•The Three Spaniards 20 

By W. M. WILLIAMS. 

Science in Short Chapters 20 

By Mrs. HENRY WOOD. 

•East Lynne 20 


By Mrs. OLIPHANT. 


•The Ladies Lindores 20 

By LOUISA PARR. 

Robin 20 


MISCELLANEOUS. 

Paul and Virginia 10 

Margaret and her Bridesmaid*. 20 

The Que(*i of the County 20 

Baron Mifcichausen 10 


TWO GREAT NOVELS 


GIDEON FLEYCE. 

By HENRY W. LUCY. 

1 vol. 12mo. Handsome Paper Covers. No. 96 of Lovell’s Library. 20c. 

“When ‘Gideon Fleyce’ has been read, the |answer will be that Mr. 
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comments upon political matters are delightful.” — Scotsman. 

“ This is one of the cleverest novels we have read for a long time. The 
author is sure to take a high place among contemporary novelists, may perhaps 
some day prove his fitness to rank among the great masters of the craft.”— 
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The flow of easy humour and the extraordinary perception of the ridiculous 
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Academy. 

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this scene is the central point, is managed with an ingenuity worthy almost of 
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“ An excellent story, which has the double interest of an exciting plot 
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THE GOLDEN SHAFT. 

By CHARLES GIBBON, Author of “Robin Gray,” &c. 

lvol. 12mo. Handsome Paper Covers. No. 57 of Lovell’s Library. 20c. 

“ Mr. Gibbon is to be congratulated on the character of ‘Fiscal ’ Musgrave, 
which is as original as it is lifelike, and as attractive as it is original. The 
situation which chiefly displays it is well imagined, powerfully worked out, 
and sufficiently striking in itself.”— Academy. 

“ Excellent in every important respect ; the story is interesting, the plot 
is most ingeniously devised, the characters are cleverly conceived and con- 
sistently drawn, while several of them stand out picturesquely in their quaint 

originality Altogether, we may certainly congratulate Mr. Gibbon on his 

book.”— S aturday Review. 

“ Mr. Gibbon is at his best in this story. It contains some really powerful 
’ situations, and its plot is well worked out. The conscientious difficulties of 
the Fiscal, the father of the charming herione, are well developed by Mr. 
Gibbon, and the story will be read with interest throughout.”— Manchester 
Examiner. 

“Altogether, the ‘Golden Shaft’ is gooc%,and fully equals, if it does not im- 
prove upon, anything Mr. Gibbon has previously written.”— Glasgow Herald. 

“It is pleasant to meet with a work by Mr. Gibbon that will remind his 
readers of the promise of his earliest efforts. The story of Thorburn and his 
family is full of power and pathos, as is the figure of the strong-natured 
Musgrave.” — Athenaeum. 

“ On the whole, we have seen nothing before of Mr. Gibbon’s writing so 
good as this novel.” — Daily News. 

For sale by all Newsdealers and Booksellers. The Trade supplied by The 
American News Company and Branches. 

JOHN W. LiOVEL.1, CO., 

14 & 16 Vesey St., New York. 


> 


Eyres Acquittal. 




By v 

HELEN MATHERS, I 

Author of “Comin’ Thro’ the Rye.” 

. S 





I 


. NEW YORK: 

JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY, 

14 and 16 Vesey Street. 



■ 

A : 

-y ’■ /*h' 1 'v.inoU"’ a*»in »A. 








i 








: 'Aii'lY '/{'AVI . . 

. 




EYRE’S ACQUITTAL. 


CHAPTER I. 

The remote village of Lovel was one afternoon elec- 
trified by news of the death of its Squire, and the intimation 
that his body might be expected to arrive before night, under 
the care of his friend, Lord Lovel. 

In less than an hour Mr. Eyre’s grave was being dug 
beside that of the woman whose lover and husband he had 
been, and of whose murder he was secretly believed to be 
guilty ; though if he had killed her, it had been for love — be- 
cause, though he could endure to see her die, he could not 
brook the sight of himself degraded in her eyes, or, as others 
said, know himself supplanted in her love by his friend. 

He had never been accused of the crime, nor even for 
some time suspected of it, and this was partly due to the fact 
that at his instigation a woman named Clarke had been tried 
for the murder, and, by circumstantial evidence, so nearly 
convicted, that her acquittal was indignantly declared by the 
Judge to be a gross miscarriage of justice. 

But some extraordinary disclosures made by Mr. Eyre in 
the course of the trial had, in the eyes of many of those pres- 
ent, reversed the position of accuser and accused ; while 
the ruthless lifting by his own hand of the curtain that had 
screened his inner life appalled the gazers, who in one 
scathing flash of light saw him stripped naked of his worldly 
robes, and he as the man that God and his own heart had 
long known him. 

He stood before them a man who for years had been at 
the mercy of a secret sin ; himself the fatal moving power 
out of which had sprung three successive tragedies of un- 
speakable pathos and horror, upon which he gazed impassive 


2 


E YRE ’S ACQ UITTAL. 


and unsubdued — less repentant of his misdeeds than cal- 
lously bold in vaunting them — casting aside like a worn-out 
glove the honorable life he had worn in those years when he 
had 

Built God a church, and laughed His word to scorn, 

and by his inhumanity rather than his sins, cutting himself 
off from all sympathy with his kind. 

As betrayer and deserter of the woman Clarke in her 
youth, and remorseless bringer to justice of her only friend 
for the murder of his unacknowledged child (privately exert- 
ing his great influence to hang her) — as the man who first 
robbed his best friend of his sweetheart, then filched his 
good name and wore it before the world — as the assassin 
who attempted Hester Clarke’s life because he had an hourly 
dread lest she sould tell Mrs. Eyre the truth — as the accuser 
of that unhappy woman of his wife’s murder — and as magi- 
strate committing her to jail while yet his child’s corpse lay 
warm upon her knee — thus, bit by bit, his character during 
the trial painted itself to the shrinking beholders’ gaze, till 
all felt themselves in the presence of a man whose hand 
would not shrink from any deed to which his iron will im- 
pelled him. 

From that day the secret conviction grew and strengthened 
that Mr. Eyre had himself been the murderer of the wife he 
had so passionately loved, the most popular reason assigned 
being a violent jealousy of Lord Lovel, culminating in a fit 
of madness, in which he slew her. 

But those who were best acquainted with Mr. Eyre’s 
haughty and inflexible character, said that he never needed to 
know jealousy, and felt none ; but that the complications of 
his position with regard to Hester Clarke becoming unbear- 
able- — and rather than see his wife endure those miseries that 
the knowledge of his sin must cost her, he had cut the knot 
of his difficulties and her life with a single blow, and so se- 
cured ignorance to her for ever. 

Others denied the murder to have been one of either jeal- 
ousy or pride, declaring it to be one of simple greed, com- 
mitted for the sake of the magnificent diamonds she had worn 
that night, and which were found missing when she was dis- 
covered stabbed to the heart, but breathing yet, in her chair. 

Strong suspicion had at the time attached itself to the 
gardener, who was seized on a ladder, placed against her win- 
dow, within a few moments of the deed, and whose infatua- 


E YRE'S A CQU/T7AL. 


3 

tion for Mr. Eyre’s French nurse was said to be powerful 
enough to precipitate him into crime for her sake. 

“ Give me diamonds like Madame’s, and I will marry you,” 
she had said to him not half an hour before the murder ; and 
the diamonds had disappeared, and the gardener been caught 
almost red-handed, yet Mr. Eyre had refused for one moment 
to believe in the man’s guilt, all his energies being bent to the 
conviction of the woman Clarke ; and before setting out on 
that lengthened journey, that extended to three years, he had 
the man and maid married in his presence, and left them es- 
tablished in sole charge of the Red Hall, with certain funds 
to be disposed of according to his directions. And, though 
keenly watched by the village, the oddly-matched pair had 
given rise to no suspicion, and gradually people ceased to be- 
lieve in their guilt. 

Of Mr. Eyre nothing was known. He and Lord Lovel 
had gone abroad within a few days of each other and were 
conjectured to be together, but as both preserved an unbroken 
silence, sending home neither word nor sign of their existence, 
the first positive news that had reached the village being con- 
tained in the telegram that announced the speedy arrival of 
living and dead. 

And those who gathered round to see the digging of Mr. 
Eyre’s grave, whispered that the real secret of Mrs. Eyre’s 
death would never be known now, since the key to it was for- 
ever locked within the cold heart of the* man whom she alone 
had so passionately loved, while all other men and women 
feared him. 


CHAPTER II. 

“ Seems like yesterday I were digging het grave,” said the 
sexton, jerking his head towards the narrow, green mound 
where Madcap Eyre lay with her child on her breast, “ and 
I’d sooner ha’ dug his the first. ... I misdoubt me if the 
daisies and crocuses ’ll ever spring as free above his, as they 
do out o’ her pretty head — God bless her ! ” 

“ If he’d bin a poor man he’d lie at the cross roads with 
a stake through his heart,” said Nancy of the Mill, who stood 
with arms a-kimbo. “ Lord ! to think that she died as happy 


4 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


— like a baby in its mother’s arms — ’tis said she felt so safe- 
like, she didn’t even kiss him before she died . . . and he’ll 
never get near enough for her to kiss him now — God 
A’mighty ’ud never stand it.” 

“ I niver thowt he’d a died till he’d swung somebody or 
’nother for her,” said the blacksmith ; “ to see his grave a- 
digging seems like a story broke off short-like in its middle 
— t’other world gets the end o’t, and neither they nor us is a 
bit the wiser.” 

“ Love begins all things and death ends ’em,” said the 
gravedigger, sententiously ; “ half the sin in the world’s born 
of the taste o’ a cherry lip, and a gentle eye’ll sink many a 
soul as has kept the commandments from his youth up— ’twas 
a most powerful true love as turned th’ Squire from an honest 
man to a black-hearted sinner.” 

“ He give his sowl for her,” said a sad-faced woman who 
stood by, “ and he couldn’t do more for her if ’twas ever so 
— he knew that if ever she corned to know about Hester 
Clarke and the drownded child ’twould kill her . . . ’tis said 
that just afore she died she said ’twas the happiest moment 
of her life, and niver knowed she’d been murdered — she went 
so quick after she’d come out of the chloroform.” 

“ There’s a man for you ! ” cried Nancy, lifting up her 
hands ; “ if so be as he did stab her through jealousy, to bide 
beside her all through that night, holding the handkercher to 
her mouth, and not letting her come to herself one blessed 
minnit, and the doctor saying, sez he, ‘ if she dies, ’tis murder ’ 
— and the Squire looks up and sez, * What then ? ’ O ! Lord, 
what a man ! ” 

“ It minds me of Otheller,” said a village pedagogue, 
whose rusty coat-tails swept his heels. “ He killed his wife 
for jealousy ; but there was no knife or chloroform there , only 
pillows.” 

“ The master had no call to be jealous,” said Sally Genge, 
who has just joined the group ; “ she never loved but him, 
and he knowed it.” , 

And what a pair they made,” said the gravedigger, resting 
on his spade, “ so lightsome, spirity, and beautiful ! She’d 
walk beside master, but dance alongside of t’other — seems 
like as if they two ought to be lyin’ here side by side . . . . 
he left his heart wi’ her the day we laid the mool above her.” 

“ She were well loved,” said the sexton’s -wife, softly 
“ and for her sake the two men loved one another. ’Twas 
grand to see ’em standing shoulder to shoulder at th’ ’sizes— 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


s 

’twas the only speck o’ varture in master’s character when he 
up an’ said ’twas he, an’ not the young Lord, as had brought 
Hester Clarke to shame — seemin’ as if he didn’t valley the 
wurld’s opinion a groat, so long as she never heard the whis- 
per o’t.” 

“ He was ever of a murderish sort of mind,” said the 
pedagogue, shaking his head— “ ’twas greatly in my mind, 
when he set out so quick after Lord Lovel, that revenge was 
at the bottom ; for, though a man may kill his wife for love, 
he mostly kills her lover for hate.” 

“ Very bookish talk ! ” said the sexton, disparagingly ; 

“ some more leavings of Otheller, I s’pose ; but them as sits 
down to write books is mostly pore creatures, and nat’rally 
the folks they set struttin’ on the page is like theirselves . . 
they aint true to human natur’ ; an’ if you ticket a man wi’ a 
deadly sin, an’ expect him to act accordin’, ten to one but 
he’ll bust out with a bit o’ vartue as ’ll make you feel as if 
you’d never knowed its right color before ... an’ if the 
master slew her as he lov’d best of all upon earth, ’tis ten to 
one ’twas for some reason as never enter.ed into your 
Otheller’s or any of them dummies’ heads.” 

“Dummies ! ” «ejaculated the pedagogue, furious at this 
insult to the creatures of his own discovery — ergo his own ; 
but a push from one of the crowd nearly precipitating him 
into the open grave compelled him to take an awkward leap 
backwards, in the course of which his head met a tombstone 
that made him think of Othello with disgust for a week. 

The cause of the catastrophe was Job, who came to the 
very edge, and ‘looked down with bitter hatred at the yawning 
chasm. 

“ Dig it deep,” he said ; “ he’s been the curse of the 
place this many a year, and there’s no knowing where his 
sins may sprout up again — but please God we’ve done with 
bastards and murders now — a bad man,” cried Job, striking 
his foot against the crumbling earth ; “ he spoilt my little 
Master Frank’s life, and make him carry on his shoulders a 
sin that wasn’t his ’n, and speaks up the ‘truth too late, for 
she never knowed it . . . there’s nought but hemlock ’ll 
grow here, though them two sweet souls laid alongside might 
save him . . . but, thank God, he’s decide and my little Mas- 
ter Frank’s above-ground ! ” 

His old voice ceased in a triumphant quaver as he turned ' 
from the grave to the dwindling group of villagers, for the 
short November afternoon was closing in, and a chilly mist 


6 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


rising in spectral shapes about the nearer tombstones, and 
gathering more closely about the little group, formed a wall 
that shut out all objects beyond. 

“ Ay ! ” said the sexton, looking down, “but I’d rather 
to-day was to-morrer, and we’d got him here. Th’ Squire 
were never warsted in anything yet, an’ it seems s’prisin that 
he should be throwed in his first wrastle, so to speak, wi’ 
death. ... I mostly gets a blink o’ the dead face in its coffin 
while I’m diggin’ its grave, but somehow I can’t see the 
master’s.” 

“You shall within the hour,” said Job, briskly; “and 
now I must be hastenin’ back, or the body ’ll be there afore 
me, and my little Master Frank ’ll be expectin ” 

What was it that froze the v/ords on his lips ? Whose 
was this tall shape that loomed gigantic through the mist, 
and from which after one shuddering glance all fell away, 
clutching at each other like drowning creatures in a sinking 
ship? Job, Standing erect, the vigor of youth rekindled in 
his veins, withered and grew old, as, with a lightning convic- 
tion of the truth, he stammered, “ My master — where is my 
master? ” 

Mr. Eyre looked down at the half-veiled chasm at his 
. feet. 

“ His grave is already dug,” he said, “ and you have re- 
ceived my message. He lies at the house yonder.” 

1 His grave,” repeated Job, slowly and stupidly ; “ his 
grave . . . but he’s alive — the message was from him 
’twas your body he was bringing . . . his dinner’s preparing, 
and his chair’s set. . . . My little Frank” hie sobbed, “my 
dear, dear little Master Frank ” — then seized Mr. Eyre’s arm 
and shook him like a reed ; “ did you kill him as you killed 
your wife ? ” he shrieked. 

“ He was killed in battle abroad,” said Mr. Eyre, and his 
voice, hollow and worn, might have been a ghost’s. “ He 
had been an hour dead when I found him. I laid him in his 
coffin and brought him straight home. The message must 
have blundered on its way.” 

But Job did not hear ... by the side of that empty 
grave his faithful old heart broke, and, palsied and tottering, 
he had crept away home to where, for the first, last time, his 
. little Master Frank was waiting to receive him. 


EIRE'S A C QUIT! A L. 


CHAPTER III. 

“ And so you dug my grave with a will, my friend/’ said 
Mr. Eyre, looking keenly at. the gravedigger, “ and I’ve dis- 
appointed you ; but it shan’t be love’s labor lost. Lord 
Love! loved my wife — and she him — and there’s room for me 
on the other side. And they shall have no monument, and 
no stained glass yonder ; but only the flowers they both 
loved, with the sun shining through them — and there ’ll be 
no briar to grow out of either breast, but only a rose. And 
so you thought I killed my wife ? ” he added, turning ab- 
ruptly to the terrified villagers, who began to smart under a 
more wholesome fear of him in the flesh than in the spirit. 

“ Nay, sir,” said the sexton’s wife, curtseying, “ ’tis not 
for poor folks like we to judge our master ; “ the old man did 
but prate out what he’s caught up from his betters.” 

“ Good God ! ” cried Mr. Eyre, like a man violently 
awakened from a dream, “ is it possible ? “ then stooped ana 
plucked a daisy from her grave. “ Poor, poor Madcap ! ” he 
said, so low that none might hear him, “ and is that all my 
love hath brought thee ? ” Then, shrouding himself in his 
black cloak, the mist swallowed him up from the frightened 
gazer’s eyes and he was gone. 

“ Tis well that Frank lies yonder, not I,” he said aloud 
as he crossed the churchyard. “ since that’s the popular 
idea. I’ll live to disprove it, if only for her sake — as if the 
sweet soul could have loved her murderer — and though I’ve 
thought of most things, I never thought of that though 
clearly some fool did — most likely Busby — and set the coun- 
try farmyard in a cackle, because its chief goose had laid 
another egg. But she can’t hear them, and she’s happy ; and 
Frank’s found her by now ; and he loves her too well to tell 
her the secret he wouldn’t tell me. What was it ? ” he cried 
aloud, and standing still in the darkness. “Three years 
I’ve lost in hunting for it, and meanwhile the woman’s escaped 
me. But I’ll find her yet.” 

As he climbed the familiar hill to his home, he thought 
of how often those two bright young creatures, now sound in 
death below, had trod it beside him ; and once he drew back, 
as though physically unable to face the empty house, across 
whose threshold his Madcap would never dance to meet him 


8 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


any more. He entered the courtyard, and mechanically 
turned to that wing of the house in whic{j her chamber lay, 
and from the force of habit, looked up as if he would have 
distinguished her window through the darkness. But what 
was this ? A clear light burned within, and as he paused 
below* : his foot struck against a ladder placed against the 
wall. Good God ! he thought, has it stood here ever since 
that, night? And then he remeifibered that it was the very 
day and month of the year upon which she had been mur- 
dered. 

He had thought it unnatural that Hester should climb 
the ladder ujiless with sinister intent ; yet he found his foot 
on the first rung before he was aware ; and as he rose, step 
by step, put himself in her place, and in the lighted room 
above seemed to see Madcap, asleep and unconscious of her 
doom. 

As his head and shoulders rose above the sill, filling the 
window from lintel to lintel, he saw that it was unshuttered 
and ajar, while through the clouded pane before him he once 
more beheld the diamonds that he had last seen on his wife’s 
neck when he left her in the drawing room below with Lord 
Lovel. 

“ I’d rather have the right to wear these openly than own 
the finest farm in Canada, “ said a woman whose petticoat of 
linsey wolsey, drab stays, and coarse white bodice contrasted 
as curiously with the jewels she wore, as did her personal 
beauty with the sordid plainness of the man who stood at 
some little distance from her, his features expressing a stupid 
admiration that struggled with an almost abject terror. 

“You’re just doited to deck y’rself wi’ ’em,” he said sul- 
lenly. “ M’appen but they’ll hang the two on us yet.” 

“ There’s only we two in the house,” she said ; “ the child’s 
asleep, and every door locked, and master’s body’s at the 
Towers by now. There’s none likely to come nigh us to-night. 
Sit down, you fool,” she added, as she turned herself this way 
and that before the mirror, “ did you ever see fireflies give 
out such a shine as yon ? ” 

“ Sit me down — here ? ” he said, looking not at his soiled 
fustian, but at the middle of the room, his eyes fixed as if he 
saw there some fearsome sight, “ seems like as I see her now 
as I seed her that night sittin’ in her white gownd, and the red 
blood gurglin’ out ” — as though involuntarily, his earth- 
stained hand lifted itself, and pointed to where his eyes 
dwelt — “ I were mad to let mysel’ be dragged here this night ; 


E YRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


9 


and that poor soul— innocent of all save peeping, and a'most 
hanged for our sin — Fd ha’ confessed all afore I saw her 
swinging. An’ all for naught but to see you wi’ a halter of 
diamonds round your weazle ” 

“ Tis handsomer than many a lady’s,” said the woman, 
slowly, as one whom a thought has struck ; “ why should I go 
with the poor fool at all ? ” she muttered, half aloud ; “ in 
Paris I might wear ’em, and ” 

“ I see no murder there,” Mr. Eyre had once exclaimed, 
gazing at his gardener’s features; but as Josephine’s half- 
dropped words reached the man’s ears and he strode forward, 
his master knew that his study had been superficial, and that 
beneath yon boorish exterior might lurk unsuspected possibi- 
lities of crime. 

“ So you’d like to give me the go-by,” said Digges with a 
bitter curse, as he crushed the woman’s white arm in his 
coarse hand ; “ jest you try it,” and he breathed hard and 
thick ; “ if so be as I’ve sold my sowl for you, I’ll git my 
penny’s worth, an’ where I go you’ll foller. I alius knew 
you was a bad lot, but your first fancy man’ll b$ the last, for 
I’ll kill the pair o’ ye. Ive half the mind to tear ’em off yer 
body this night an’ ’fess to the truth ” 

The woman laughed as she put her free arm about his 
neck and kissed him — her beauty held him in bondage yet. 
In the lower ranks of life it is seldom that a man ill-uses hj$ 
handsome mate so long as she is true to him. 

“ Didnk I promise to love you if you could give me dia- 
monds like Madame’s ? ” she said, sickening at the contrast 
of their two faces in the glass, “ and I’ve worn them once. 
To-night we’ll unpick them from, their settings, and hide 
them for the last time.” 

“ We maun bide awhile afore we makes a move,” said 
Digges, who had relapsed into his usual stolid self ; “ m’ap- 
pen the neebors ’ll keep their eyes open yet awhile.” 

“ They’ve given, over suspecting long ago,” said Joseph- 
ine ; “ folks that dress themselves in woollen must be vir- 
tuous — and poverty ’is a grand cloak to hide one’s sins un- 
der.” 

She was flaunting backwards and forwards before the 
mirror now, and beyond her lay the pure, simple background 
of Madcap’s chamber, arranged just as she had left it when 
she had ignorantly started on her last long journey without 
farewell kiss or word to the husband and children she so pas- 
sionately loved. 


ro 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


There stood her white bed, and beside it the table that 
held her Bible, Prayer-book, and portrait of her husband 
alone and her two boys together ; near them lay the broken 
toy that her boy had dropped when he had paid her his last 
visit, and wept at leaving her, not knowing how soon he 
would share with her that sleep which knows no waking. . . . 
Yonder, too, was the cabinet of which one unlocked drawer 
held a secret that defied Mr. Eyre, while by its side the easy- 
chair stood in which Madcap had been “ twinn’d of her sweet 
life ” unknowing. . . . 

On the borders of the half light Digges hovered, fearful 
to remain, as to depart, alone, his round eyes resting on any- 
thing rather than his wife. All at once the blackness of the 
window attracted Josephine’s attention; it would, make a 
longer looking-glass than the one in which she gazed, and 
she approached it, seeing but night beyond, for Mr. Eyre 
covered his face with his mantle as she advanced, so that she 
saw the jewels flashing like sun rays upon an inky pool. 

But as she looked, some horrible, lightning impression of 
gazing at dark against dark seized her ; involuntarily she 
pressed nearer, and as the heavy mantle slipped, and Mr. 
Eyre’s eyes met hers through the glass, his features mena- 
cing and stern, pale and haggard as a man new risen from the 
tomb, icy terror congealed the very blood in her veins, and 
slew in her the power to cry out — to stir. Ignorant and super- 
stitious, she never doubted that this was her dead master in 
his cere-clothes, come to confront her with the witnesses to her 
crime upon her body . . . and reason tottered, but was not 
overthrown, till, dashing the casement wide he stretched his 
arm and seized her . . . then her wits fled, and even as Mr. 
Eyre knew it, and saw the chamber door open, and Digges 
gone, he knew that once more the secret of Madcap’s death 
had escaped him. 


CHAPTER IV.' 

Mr. Eyre cursed himself for a melodramatic fool as he 
let the woman go, and hastened to regain earth, knowing 
that there were but two exits from the Red Hall, by one or 
other of which Digges was certain to effect his escape, 


E YRE'S A CQ UITTA L. l x 

But the pitch darkness aided the fugitive, and when he 
dropped noiselessly from the nursery window, Mr. Eyre grim- 
f ly watching a hundred yards distant, heard nothing, but was 
so certain of his having got off that he wasted no time in 
searching the house, but descended to the village, where he 
had the curious misfortune to be mistaken at every other step 
for his own ghost. 

The story of his appearance in the churchyard was not 
yet fully circulated through the place, and many believed his 
body to be then reposing at the Towers, so that some hin- 
drance to the search for Digges was unavoidable. 

“ Save your cackles,” he said at last, sternly, “ and 
search for this man throughout every yard of the village — a 
hundred pounds to him who seizes and brings him to me 
alive ; but let no one enter the Red Hall,” he added, as he 
mounted the horse that he had himself hastily saddled, and 
set out at full gallop for Marmiton. 

Within five minutes the whole population of the village 
was abroad, some with lanterns, others with hastily made 
and kindled brands, whose light they flung on outhouses, and 
startled fowl-cotes, beating each foot of field and wood, and 
even climbing to the steep cliff that rose sheer behind the 
Red Hall, in one upper window of which a light shone, 
tempting the seekers to pursue their search within. 

But none dared withstand their master’s command — he had 
returned grimmer and more terrible than he departed ; but 
surely not the guilty man they had supposed, as his search 
for Digges, and a few hasty words he had let fall, pointed to 
a discovery on his part that the gardener and his wife were 
the criminals. 

But when, half an hour later, Mr. Eyre rode through the 
village, accompanied by mounted constables, many were the 
seekers who volunteered to accompany them to the hall, only 
to be peremptorily refused. Mr. Eyre’s keen glance at once 
discerned that no trace of Digges had been found ; and, 

. without pausing to make inquiry, he and those with him rode 
on to the house, where an entrance was effected by breaking 
a window. 

But for the gardener’s fatal error in leaving the ladder 
against the wall, no one could possibly have surprised the 
woman that night; and’ those who followed Mr. Eyre uttered 
a cry of amazement as, pausing on the threshold of what 
had been his wife’s chamber, he made a sign to them to look 
in. 


xa 


EYR&S ACQUITTAL. 


Before the glass sat Josephine, laughing softly to herself, 
and playing with the diamonds that now in the idiot’s king- 
dom were her own — to be worn without fear, and gloated 
over to her heart’s content. For the first time in her life 
she was happy — ay, and to the last day of it, for Mr. Eyre 
never allowed them to be taken from her during that long 
and weary time through which he waited patiently for the 
flicker of reason that should cast its light upon the manner 
of Madcap’s end. 

“ The man is not guilty,” said one of the constables who 
had been carefully watching her. “ If she’d only stolen the 
diamonds, the shock of seeing you wouldn’t have driven her 
mad. Most likely she committed the murder after Mrs. Eyre’s 
maid had left this room for the night, and went back to the 
nursery just before Hester Clarke, mounting the ladder 
through curiosity, discovered what had happened, and 
shrieked so as to rouse the house.” 

When asked if the men should search the house, he as- 
sented, but did not accompany them, though with his own 
hand he locked Josephine in a room whence egress was im- 
possible, having previously placed bread and water within 
her reach. 

The happy idiot went willingly, but cried when he took 
the light away till she fell asleep, hugging the diamonds in 
her arms. 

He then returned to his wife’s chamber, and sat down 
just within, not stirring till he heard approaching steps, when 
he rose, and, standing on the threshold, asked the chief con- 
stable if he had discovered anything ? 

“ Nothing, sir — leastways only a child, all alone, and 
sound asleep, sir.” 


CHAPTER V. 

Mr Eyre locked and barred' the hall door upon the 
searchers, then returned to his wife’s 'bedroom, and* closing 
the window, drew the curtains before it. 

Here the murderer had stood. What, Digges ? From 
here he must have seen her asleep in the chair that stood 
midway between bed and window, beside it the diamonds 


E YRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


*3 


whose wicked shine in a dullard’s eyes might have lit the 

way to an unprincipled covetous woman beyond but 

the gardener JDigges ? 

Dropping the curtain, Mr. Eyre advanced as though he 
were acting a part — how easy to aim one blow at yon sleep- 
ing shape — to seize the diamonds, and escape by the open 
window — to hide them and return, dragged by the miserable 
power of the victim over its destroyer — to encounter Hester 
Clarke hurrying from the sight upon which she had privily 
looked — to seize, and fasten the guilt upon her, she keeping 
silence throughout her trial, knowing that a word wouid save 
her ! Digges , the murderer . . . mechanically he turned to 
a cabinet that stood near him, and opened a certain drawer 
— -then brought the light, and stood looking down fixedly on 
a dim outline traced upon the wood within. 

Here the knife had lain that was afterwards found in 
Hester Clarke’s possession ; but who had placed it there, and 
did the same hand remove it ? He lifted his own, and, as one 
who makes an experiment, stretched it towards the cabinet ; 
his will making imperious question of his mind, as though he 
would wrest from it some secret that had been acquired 
against his knowledge, and must be forced to yield up to his 
command. 

But force of will would not unbar that hidden chamber of 
his soul, locked even against himself, whose keys he had lost, 
and his friend found. 

“ God forgive you /” Frank had written, when he had left 
Mr. Eyre’s sick bed to set out on his journey. “ I know the 
truth” 

The truth . . . unless brain, ear, and eye mocked Mr. Eyre 
to-night, he knew that the clue held in Frank’s dead hand, 
out yonder, was worthless ; that the mystery of Madcap’s 
death was for ever solved, and himself the sport of an illu- 
sion that had made the opportunity of a clown, 

Hester innocent — for the gardener’s overheard words 
cleared her of guilt — and he, that poor worm, that clod, guilty. 
A fierce sense of the meanness of the instrument that had 
compassed so great a crime alone moved Mr. Eyre’s soul as, 
in that silent chamber, he realized his own bitter, black mis- 
take 

Come with me now to the storming of the trenches be- 
fore Sevastopol — see a sunny-haired young fellow leading his 
men on . . . see him struck by a cannon-ball and reel from 
his saddle, while his followers trample him beneath their feet 


T 4 


EYRE’S ACQUITTAL. 


as they rush onward to victory . . . see how, amid a storm of 
shot and shell, a man rushes forward, and, lifting that yet 
warm body up, bears it away to a place of safety, where he 
tears aside the scarlet coat, only to find that the heart be- 
neath is still — the heart that holds the lost clue to Madcap’s 
death ! 

“ Silent, with closed lips, unconscious of bravery. ” So 
young that his mother in heaven could not have forgotten his 
likeness yet, the soldier lay — beaten in the fight, but with a 
gleam of victory shining athwart his wide-opened blue eyes 
and shattered features that, to one who loved him, might have 
seemed more nobly beautiful than the glance that had been 
his in life. Yet as enemy rather than friend, Mr. Eyre lifted 
that lifeless body, and gently laid it down. He and the man 
before him had been comrades, sworn to one cause, and it' 
had 1 been no part of Mr. Eyre’s scheme that either should 
die before it was won. No pity for that gallant fate stirred 
him— no memory of how he had loved his friend, and stolen 
his Madcap from him softened his heart ; only a bleak and a 
bitter rage filled his soul that, after three long years of pur- 
suit, in which he had wasted the whole force of his brain 
and body, he had at last come up with the pursued to find 
him — dead. 

“ He should have been shot through the heart as a deser- 
ter, not buried a.s a hero,” Mr. Eyre thought, as he folded his 
cloak across Frank and left him alone in the rude hut, while 
he himself went to search for those proofs of Lord Lovel’s 
identity that he must take with him to Lovel when he bore 
the body home for burial. 

He carried his life in his hand that night ; but, as if he 
had been Belial’s seif, no harm touched him, and day was break- 
ing when he found Frank’s Colonel — dying — but able to recog- 
nize Mr. Eyre as an old friend, and to answer his questions 
about Frank. 

Lord Lovel had joined quite recently, and seemed to 
court death. He had confided to him, a few days previously, 
a packet of papers that he desired might be sent to Mr. Eyre 
if he fell. These papers were on the dying man’s body , at 
that moment, and as Mr. Eyre drew them from above his heart 
a fierce throb of hope animated him ; for her, perhaps, Frank, 
though dead, spoke to him the truth. 

As he tore them open, the dying man suddenly cried out, 
“ Has any one seen Methuen ? Take care there’s no mis- 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


15 

take . . . their own mothers couldn’t tell ”... then died, with 
the unfinished sentence on his lips. 

A withered branch of flowers ... a faded ribbon ... a pale 
photograph of a girl’s face made out of sunshine . . . half-a 
dozen letters written in childish letters, and signed “ youf 
little sweetheart, Madcap” . . . one or two notes, on which 
the ink was fresher, and the tone sedater, with the name of 
“ Eyre,” added to that of “ Madcap” . . . these and no more. 

Not a word to his friend — not a syllable to call back the 
awful burden he had laid upon him . . . and as, later, Mr. Eyre 
stood looking down upon that shrouded Clay, he could have 
spurned it with his foot in loathing. 

When the rude coffin had been made ready, Mr. Eyre and 
his dead man set out for home, his mind a sullen blank, that 
last stage of the impotent rebellion against God that had for 
three years consumed him. 

In Frank’s name, he telegraphed to Lovel news of his own 
death, certain that Josephine would immediately communicate 
the news to Hester, so that he would probably find the two 
women together on his arrival. . No matter what hidden clue 
Frank had held, in his soul Mr. Eyre knew Hester Clark to 
be guilty ; and it was with the implacable determination to 
convict her yet, that he had approached his house that night,, 
expecting to find her within it. 

And on his very threshold he had been met by this sordid 
reading of the tragedy; a mere clue to which had made 
him a wanderer' on the face of the earth for three long years, a 
clue that had made him put even Hester aside as one to be 
dealt with later, and now {/Digges or Josephine were guilty 
— if — but what waste of time to speculate, when by that hour 
of the knowing day the man would be in the hands of justice, 
and probably his confession made. 

But as a side-thought will sweep a man out of the track 
of sober fact, and bid tragedy itself pause while he dallies 
with a folly, so Mr, Eyre’s mind started off at a tangent to 
Madcap, and rested there, just as a mariner in drowning 
looks up to the patch of blue above him. • So the darkened 
chamber, the white chair, receded from Mr. Eyre’s eyes, and 
in their place he saw an old-fashioned garden, and a young 
girl stepping backwards down a ladder, as, aloud, she counted 
the plums on the garden-wall. 

Anon he saw the same young shape (but three months 
older) sitting beneath the white plume of a thorn, whose 
blossoms were no paler than her cheeks ; till a step on the 


i6 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL, 


turf made her turn, and the next moment two gentle 
arms, arms that trembled, but did not doubt, were round his 
neck. . . A trysting-place (six hours later), to which a young 
shape in a white gown came stealing- — all her worldly goods 
tied up in her pocket-handkerchief, and nothing in life to 
keep her warm but her lover’s arms. . . A hurried marriage, 
at which an old friend of the bride’s assisted, and then six 
years of such happiness as might make a wicked man in love 
with virtue, and look back with loathing on the pleasures he 
had found in sin. 

And those arms had held her fast and safe through those six 
short, happy years — ay, and made to her so sure a haven 
that dreamlessly she had sunk to her last rest in them, know- 
ing neither fear nor pain, so long as they were closed about 
her — yea, and even in the moment of death knew no pang, 
but called it the happiest moment of her life. 

She had been happy to the last — exultantly, in that lonely 
chamber, Mr. Eyre lifted his brows to Heaven, and cried 
aloud, that no matter what his suffering, sin and shame might, 
be, she had never suffered. 

Suddenly he rose, and stretching out,his hands towards 
yon empty bed, called wildly and passionately, “ Madcap ! ” 

The starved cry rang through the silent house as, pierced 
through all his armory of pride by that living thought of l^r, 
the strong man awakened for the first time to the full deso- 
lation of his miserable lot. 

Hark ! what was that ? A movement rather than a sound 
that stole through the empty place . . . then a faint stir as 
of something that approached waveringly and with many halts, 
till gradually the faint, pattering sound as of a child’s bare 
feet upon polished boards drew nearer and nearer, till, on 
the threshold of Madcap’s chamber, they paused as though 
in fear or doubt. Through the fierce wrestle of his bodily 
weakness with the power that crushed him, these footsteps 
sounded but faintly, nor when a gentle hand pushed the door 
open, and a little shape stood on the threshold, did he move 
or turn, till, feeling something approach him, he tore his 
hand from his eyes, and angrily pointed to the door. 

Who was it that dared intrude on him thus ? He looked, 
but at first saw nothing ; then downward, and saw close be- 
side him a child no higher than his knee. 

“ Go ! ” he said, once more lifting his hand in the fierce 
gesture of dismissal that Madcap’s children had so invariably 


E YRE’S A CQ UITTAL. 


*7 

obeyed. But the harsh look that sped like a blow, fell fal- 
tering, for what was this ? 

Did he not know this face by heart — its eyes — its lips — 
the very sunshine of its glance, ay, the very dimples in lips 
and cheeks — the same bright hair that had so often curbed 
about his hand . . . this could not be. Josephine’s child ? 

Unconsciously he sank to his knees, she looking at him 
earnestly, then, with one of those angelic instincts of pity 
that will move a little child’s heart to the comprehension of a 
tragedy it cannot know , and with no fear of that terrible face 
above her, she lifted a dimpled hand to his neck, and left it 
there. 

“ Is ’oo miserbul ? M she said in her tender little voice, 
then finding something in his face that satisfied her, put her 
other arm round his neck, and gave him that first, best, 
purest gift earth can afford — a child’s unbidden kiss. He re- 
ceived it as if he were stone. . . . How long ago was it since 
any one had kissed him ? Then, putting her from him so 
harshly that any but a child would have been startled into 
the belief that he was angry, cried, — 

“ What is your name ? ” 

~ “ I’se Madcap,” she said, and laughed aloud in the deso- 
late chamber . . . and then Mr. Eyre knew how betwixt him 
and God had passed the shield of a little child. 

Here was Madcap’s message to him from the grave — sent 
to him in his darkest, loneliest hour; here in his grasp was 
that divinest link between God and man — the hand of a little 
child. 

Here, in the very moment that his life had practically 
come to a full stop, was a heart put into it. ... Ay ! but 
through which to suffer, to be made to remember dead sins 
• * • though he knew it not, was not here his punishment, 
the instrument by which his stubborn soul was to be brought 
to submission ? 

No such thought touched him as he bowed his head on 
the little innocent breast that took it with all its sins upon 
it, and, neither questioning, nor doubting, knew only that he 
was in trouble, and that he was her friend. 

“ Can’t find Joey anywhere ,” she said, shaking the bright 
head that rested on Mr. Eyre’s raven locks, “ and I don’t like 
being left all by my lone self — has ’oo come to stop? ” she 
added, suddenly. 

“ Yes ! ” 

“ What’s oo’ name ? ” 


i8 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


“ I* am your father.” 

« 0 ! no,” said the child, looking at him with grave, love- 
ly eyes— 1 “ Daddy’s dead— Joey said so this afternoon— 
they’re going to put him in the cold, cold pit to-morrow — 
poor Daddy ! ” 

She shivered a little as she said it, as if chill or afraid ; 
and, as though it had been his Madcap’s body that his own 
carelessness had put in danger, Mr. Eyre lifted the child, and, 
wrapping her in his cloak, carried her to the bed, and laid her 
down upon it. 

She fell asleep soon, with her hand in his, and a shower 
of bright hair falling over both . . . and so the morning 
found them ... a child wrapped in a man’s gray cloak, and 
a man who slept with his arm thrown around her, as though, 
even in his slumbers, he might ^atch over the one treasure 
that, in the shipwreck of his life, had been cast up from the 
very deeps at his feet. 


CHAPTER VI. 

By eight o’clock came riding in hot speed Colonel Busby, a 
magistrate of the neighborhood, and the most pestilential 
busybody within it. 

But when he came to the vast hall, whose lofty ceiling was 
still in gloom, while the light from the stained-glass windows 
fell but faintly on Lord Lovel’s uncovered face, upon which, 
as yet, no change had come, with such incredible rapidity 
had Mr. Eyre brought him home, involuntarily he bared his 
head, and, coming to the^side of the coffin, looked down with 
a real impulse of sorrow on the young fellow’s face. 

How well he remembered Frank Lovel in life, and how 
nobly he had taken on himself Mr. Eyre’s sins ; and now the 
one lay dead, while the other lived and flourished, ripe- 
ning, perhaps, for some new crime, and defying alike the 
justice of God and the opinion of man. 

The busybody had come in war, secretly suspecting some 
mystery about Frank’s death, but outwardly to demand by 
what right Mr. Eyre commanded the young man’s grave to 
be dug, and the burial to take place, before the process of 
identification had been gone through, or the heir and his 


E YRE'S A CQ UITTAL. 


*9 


advisers summoned. But as first one, then another came in, 
those who had loved him, those who had blamed him ; yea, 
and those who had pitied while they honored him. All these, 
I say, as they wept, knew him ; and as the hours wore on, and 
more and more people gathered, Frank lay in state, however 
humble, and was a hero, so that strong men wept for the 
thought of the manner of his death, and the women for the 
glimpse of the stain on his scarlet coat, above which his 
hands rested so quietly, their work being done. 

Last of all came Mr. Eyre, and, without looking at those 
around, stood gazing down upon him, and might have spoken 
""that most exquisite farewell which, once addressed to Lance- 
lot, has never been matched in human language. 

Vast and sinewy as a gladiator of Rome, with a dark, 
stern face upon which the fires of over forty years had legibly 
left their mark, Mr. Eyre stood like a second Saul among 
those around, too negligent of their presence to defy them. 

Those around thought his face hardened as he looked 
down on his dead friend ; but his lips moved neither in bless- 
ing nor cursing, and none could have told whether the stern 
restraint of pain or the callousness of hatred held him motion- 
less during the minutes that he stood beside him. 

When at last he moved, it was with the old firm step and 
air of command, so that, involuntarily, the women around 
curtseyed and the men pulled each his forelock, ashamed of 
their doubts of him, for Job’s love had cleared the way for 
Mr. Eyre, and none durst suspect him of harm to Lord Lovel 
now. 

Colonel Busby, whose keen eyes had never left Mr. Eyre’s 
face since he entered, hurried out after him, and overtook 
him as he entered one of the avenues. 

“You seem out. of breath,” said Mr. Eyre, byway of greet- 
ing to a man he had not met these three years, and without 
offering his hand. 

“ I am,” said Colonel Busby, who, being extremely short 
and stout, resembled nothing so much as a gasping frog ! 
“but that telegram, Eyre — it must be seen into. What gross 
carelessness on the part of the Post Office people — it gave 

every one such a shock to hear — to hear ” 

“ That I’m alive,” said Mr. Eyre ; “ exactly — it must 
have been a great blow to you after the telegram.” 

“ Well, well,” said Colonel Busby, coloring violently ; “ it’s 
a sad thing you know — poor young fellow — but fortunate 


20 


EYRES ACQUITTAL. 


you were there to bring him home. Odd, too, as I suppose 
you were not fighting yourself ? ” 

“ Not I,” said Mr. Eyre, carelessly : “ it was a mere 
chance my finding him.” 

“ And yet you’ve been together these three years ? ” said 
Colonel Busby, his inveterate curiosity not to be checked by 
the fact that all this time Mr. Eyre was walking away from 
him down the avenue. 

“ Have we ? ” said Mr. Eyre, indifferently ; “ then I sup- 
pose we’re both dumb, for I have not exchanged a syllable 
with him since I left Lovel.” 

The little man gasped with amazement and lack of breath 
as he tried to keep up with Mr. Eyre’s long stride, but the 
next moment said, — 

“ Then about that poor woman, Eyre — what a fearful 
blunder you made — and that lout of a gardener guilty after 
all.” 

“ Ah ! by the way,” said Mr. Eyre, pausing suddenly in 
his walk, H have you heard anything about the woman — has 
she been seen in the neighborhood during my absence ? You 
see I look to you for all the gossip.” 

“ As a magistrate,” said the Colonel, puffing himself out, 

“ I am compelled to take cognizance of matters that do not 
come under the heading of gossip. I have certainly made it 
my business to inquire about this unhappy and persecuted 
woman ” 

“ By whom persecuted ? ” said Mr. Eyre. 

To do Colonel Busby justice, he was no coward, and now 
he looked Mr. Eyre full in the face. 

“ By you,” he said, with a touch of dignity, not even to 
be marred by his absurd appearance. “ It was an inhuman 
persecution, since you could not have believed in her guilt.” 

“ Pshaw ! ” said Mr. Eyre, frowning ; “ but I won’t quarrel 
with you — there is no railing in an allowed fool — and for the 
first time in my life, I find your conversation interesting. And 
pray whom did you think guilty ? ” 

‘ Well,” said Busby, hesitating for a moment, but hard- 
ened by that allusion to his folly, “ it was generally considered 
that you ought to have changed places with the woman, and 
been tried for it yourself — but being a fool, I only repeat what 
was of common report.” 

“ And what is your opinion ? ” said Mr. Eyre, grimly. 

" What my opinion was matters little now that there is 


E YE EPS A CQUITTAL. 2 x 

not a shadow of doubt your gardener is guilty,” said Colonel 
Busby, stiffly. 

“ Don’t alter your opinion on that score,” said Mr. Eyre, 
carelessly. “ I’m not at all sure that either of them did it — 
or if so, the woman Clarke was accessory to the crime, and 
deserved hanging. Now that I’ve done with Lord Lovel, I 
must have her found — I’ve been too busy to think of her these 
three years.” 

“ You will remain here ? ” said Colonel Busby, curiosity 
mastering dignity. 

“To be sure,” said Mr. Eyre ; u I’ve found new ties (he 
laughed) that will keep me here awhile — and there are Lord 
Lovel’s affairs to arrange ; the new heir is a mere lad, and 
I'm his guardian. 

Colonel Busby opened his mouth, but no sound came ; for 
once, wonder silenced him. 

“ New ties ” — what were they ? Mr. Eyre guardian to 
the young heir — he — this man pre-eminent in evil, who carried 
things with as high a hand in defeat as victory ? 

“ By the way,” said Mr. Eyre,”, “ I heard something about 
your coming over to have Lord Lovel’s coffin opened — did 
you think I had killed him, too ? ” 

“ The proceedings were informal — irregular,” said Colonel 
Busby, stiffly ; “ his next of kin should have been asked to 
the funeral, which, I am told, you have fixed for to-morrow.” 

“ Not I,” said Mr. Eyre, “ but for next day. You’ll see 
the heir safe enough, and, no doubt, the lawyer— and the rest 
of ’em.” 

“ It must be a great relief to you to know that you are 
not morally responsible for your wife’s death,” said Colonel 
Busby, gathering all his energies together to implant one 
poisoned shaft in Mr. Eyre’s invulnerable hide. 

“ Almost as great a one as to know that I’m not physically 
responsible,” said Mr. Eyre, grimly ; “ and now you’d better 
run back to Mrs. Busby, and retail your news — if any ; you’ve 
filled my budget with food for a week.” 

And Mr. Eyre went on his way down one of the three 
avenues that were the glory of The Towers and the pride of 
the Lovels — avenues that branched like three spokes of a 
giant wheel from the very hall door, and gave endless variety 
to the outlook.. 

Mr. Eyre had walked them in all seasons and all weathers, 
often with Madcap, oftener with Frank ; and he knew them 
in their every gradation of splendor. But this morning he 


22 E YRE'S A CQ UITTAL. 

saw the avenue in a new light, and, as it happened, was in a 
mood to observe it. 

Dull and sodden as the day before had been, in the night 
the wind freshened, and by morning a gale had sprung up. 
The leaves of the trees, wasted to mere skeletons, danced in 
their thousands to the keen wind that smote them this way 
and that, and produced (with the sun shining through) an 
extraordinary effect, so that Mr. Eyre stood for a time look- 
ing, and thinking that he had never really seen wind before. 

As he watched, its wild fierce spirit entered into his blood, 
and with it his own rose — he was once more himself, and the 
past night of his self-abasement vanished like a dream ; he 
had been out of sorts, fasting, and had conjured up thoughts 
that the brisk morning air dispersed. His interview with 
Colonel Busby had refreshed him ; his weapons might have 
rusted, but had not worn out ; and even as a suspected mur- 
derer he could hold his own yet. 

And at the end of this avenue, that ran straight as the 
crow flies to the foot of the Red Hall, he would find some- 
body — something ; and then the dance, the whistle, the rush 
of the leaves and wind blended, held him no longer, and he 
went forward, bent only on his thoughts. 

Once he had gone this way with Frank and Madcap, and 
he had moved beside them like a ghost. Now he walked the 
same path, living , and knowing that, beyond any taking away 
of Frank or any other, she was his, had been always his to 
the last beat of her heart ; and even in dying had left him (so 
loth was she.to leave him quite) a lovely message in her own 
image, that should reach and stay him in the first hour of 
physical and mental weakness that he had ever known. 

He gave no backward thought to the dead now lying in 
the Towers. He had not forgiven him, and never would, 
even though Madcap had loved the boy ; and to Mr. Eyre’s 
own heart there had been no living soul (save her) so near to 
it as Frank Lovel. 




i 


23 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL, 


CHAPTER VII. 

No regular notifications of the hour of Lord LovePs fun- 
eral were sent out, or invitations in the county given ; never- 
theless, nearly every man of any consequence in it came, so 
that from the gates of the Towers to the churchyard there 
was an unbroken procession of men and women all on foot, 
as were the pall-bearers, so that not a sign of ostentation or 
hired grief marred the spectacle. 

Some of those present remembered that this was about 
the anniversary of Mrs. Eyre’s burying ; but there were no 
flowers on this coffin, nor did Mr. Eyre follow, but a bright- 
faced boy brought fresh from school, and looking round re- 
peatedly for the only face he knew among the bewildering 
crowd at his heels. But with. his habitual contempt for laws 
and appearances, Mr. Eyre came last of all, leading a little 
child, whose dressing had possibly delayed him, as she had 
a boa tied on over her white pinafore, and a bonnet on that * 
certainly was never made for her, while a pair of her father’s 
gauntleted gloves extended to her shoulders, and kept dry 
and warm her dimpled hands and arms. 

Though they came last, the crowd divided, and the right 
of precedence at the grave was given them ; indeed, a clear 
circle was left around the pair, that might have touched a 
less sensitive man than Mr. Eyre ; but the only sign of feel- 
ing he gave during the burial service was when he ktoked 
down at the child’s feet, and for the first time observing that 
she wore shoes, snatched her up, and, having stripped them 
off, chafed her feet, then wrapped them and her warmly in 
his cloak, and stood impassable as before. 

Madcap the younger had been quite happy as she trotted 
along beside him, and the sight of so many people, and some 
familiar faces, pleased her, but she was happiest of all when 
“ Dad ” took her up, and from the eminence of hi-s stature 
gave her a birds-eye view of the proceedings that ended in a 
long stare at a boy, whose head did not reach her father’s 
elbow as he stood behind it. 

When that droll little head popped over Mr. Eyre’s 
shoulder, the boy looked up, and fell in love at once with 
her, so that when her blue eyes dropped to him, and hei 


24 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


rosy lips pouted to him in token of. satisfaction, it was natu- 
ral enough that he should reach up to, and kiss her. 

Colonel Busby was a witness to the little scene, and con- 
sidered it unseemly to the last degree. The villagers whis- 
pered that here was the old story over again, a Lovel would 
love a Madcap, even to his own undoing, to the end of time. 
Most of those present thought of how Frank had led £)oune 
at the older Madcap’s funeral ; and some of them saw, 
grudgingly, how Providence, in meeting out its bitters, had 
kept some sweets for Mr. Eyre yet. His innocence, too, 
was clear, and men wondered that they could have doubted 
him ; even Colonel Busby, with a sigh, relinquished his sus- 
picions, and hated him worse than before. 

Those who saw him that day — this terrible man, this 
monster of evil incarnate, who had stalked tearless, unheed- 
ing through tragedies at which an angel might have wept — 
with a little child clinging to his hand, prattling, looking up 
into his face with perfect trust and love, somehow they felt 
their conviction of his Satanship rudely shaken, and in every 
breast was wrought a revulsion of feeling towards him. 

Perhaps some of the men thought of how great had been 
his wife’s love for him, and she had not been one to love un- 
worthily ; perhaps every woman present saw that he had 
dressed the child himself, and more than one mother’s heart 
yearned to him as she marked the laboriously tied bonnet- 
strings, the clumsily knotted boa, and smiled, with* a tear be- 
tween, at the masculine intelligence that had put warm 
stockings on, but shoed the little one with brown paper. 

Mr. Eyre had glanced neither to right nor left among the 
crowd, so that if his compeers were present that day he did 
not know it, and from first to last gave no one the oppor- 
tunity of either turning a friendly or a cold face towards 
them. 

He seemed neither to see or heed them, as he turned 
abruptly and left the churchyard, followed by the young heir, 
who obeyed a little commanding hand that beckoned him 
over her father’s shoulder, so that the three entered the 
Towers together. 

When the lawyer and others (including Colonel Busby, 
who must hear the will read, or die) came in, they found Mr. 
Eyre drying his daughter’s shoes by the library fire, while 
she was feeding the heir with cake, and kissing him when 
her own mouth was not full. 

He was like Doune her brother, only older and kinder ; 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL . 


25 

and her little heart went out to him at once, while the boy, 
who had no sister, and only a fine-lady cuckoo-mother, who 
had never loved him. 

And if he hung his head and blushed a little, he loved 
her, too, and took her image back to school, with him that 
day, so that often, when alone, he would blush again as the 
thought of her, and long to feel the touch of those velvet lips 
again. 

The Duke of Marmiton, who had been one of those passed 
unnoticed at the grave, on entering the room, took Mr. 
Eyre’s hand very warmly (not seeming to notice that it was 
his left, the right being occupied with Madcap’s shoe), and 
bade him a hearty welcome home after his wanderings. 

Mr. Eyre met these good wishes kindly, inquired for the 
Duchess, and, having dried the shoes to his satisfaction, put 
them on, and told the children to go and play quietly in a 
corner till he wanted them. 

Meanwhile all waited, as people were wont to wait for 
this man, no matter what might be the rank of those who 
attended him, and when he came back to the fireplace and 
gave the signal to begin, the lawyer commenced to read like 
an automaton, and in less than two minutes, so simply was 
the will worded, every soul present (save the children) knew 
its gist. 

It was dated three and a half years ago, and immediately 
after Lord Lovel had returned from his long absence with his 
regiment abroad. 

He bequeathed everything that belonged to him, unen- 
tailed, to Madcap, wife to Doune Eyre, of the Red Hall, and 
failing her, to her daughter, should she have one ; if not, to 
her younger son, Dody, and failing him, to her elder son, 
Doune Hamilton Eyre. 

“ Ten thousand a year if it’s a penny ! ” said Colonel 
Busby, almost before the lawyer had ceased to read. 

“ As guardian to young Lord Lovel,” said the lawyer,) 
folding up the will, and addressing Mr. Eyre, “you will, of 1 
course, arrange for his holidays, his education, and so forth, 
as you have done before. I drew up his father’s will, in 
which you were appointed his guardian (though at that time 
no one ever supposed he would succeed to the title), and his 
mother has asked me to say that from henceforth she trusts 
you will assume a more active guardianship than you have 
hitherto done.” 

“ Let him come here when he pleases, or — stay — to the 


EYRE? S ACQUITTAL. 


Red Hall ; he cannot be much older than Doune, and they 
can amuse each other. Tell that very fine lady, his mother, 
that she need never try to stifle herself with country breezes 
as long as I’m alive, or leave her young, new husband for an 
hour to concern herself about her boy — the only creature his 
father ever loved.” 

“ Geoffrey Lovel did well to leave his son in your care,” 
said the Duke, gravely ; “ but I Wish we had Frank here, 
though he could not have died better.” 

“ Would to God he lived ! ” said Mr. Eyre, with a passion 
that he had never before betrayed ; and one man present 
thought how finely he wore his mask .of hypocrite, while the 
others blamed themselves the more for any doubts they 
might have harbored of him. 

For gradually (there being no one to keep order) the 
room had filled, and many a friend and tenant of Frank, and 
Frank’s father, heard Mr. Eyre’s words; so that when he 
had picked up his little daughter, and bade the young heir 
“ Good-by till Christmas,” nodding, in farewell, to tjate lawyer, 
and the rest, he passed out among men who had already half 
forgiven him for his strange behavior by the gjave. 

“ A most extraordinary will and a strange guardianship,” 
said Colonel Busby, approaching the Duke, who was drawing 
on his gloves, and feeling that while he loved he understood 
“ and a most extraordinary busi- 



“ I see nothing strange in any part of it,” said the Duke, 
coldly. “ The Lovels and Eyres have been friends for many 
generations, and these two men were extraordinarily attached 
to each other. As to the guardianship, it is perfectly natural. 

' Mr. Eyre and Geoffrey Lovel were intimates and of about 
the same age, and Mrs. Lovel being a handsome woman, and 
likely to marry again, he did not wish to leave his son’s pros- 
pects at the mercy of a stepfather.” 

“ Well, well,” said Colonel Busby ; “ there’s nothing 
succeeds like success. He is to crow over us all, I suppose, 
just as he did formerly, and what’s black in others is white 
in him, and he’ll learn no lesson himself, but be for ever 
teaching us ours.” 

“ He has suffered severely,” said the Duke, gravely, “ I 
was shocked at the change in him, and I think ” — here the 
Duke raised his voice so that all around heard him — “ it 
would be more seemly if further reference to past scandals 
ceased, the more especially as certain infamous rumors 


E YRES ACQUITTAL . 


27 


spread to Mr. Eyre’s discredit have, during the past few days, 
been refuted beyond the shadow of a doubt.” 

His people were in waiting without, and he went away 
after he had spoken, bearing himself well, in spite of his sixty- 
five years, and immediately after him came the young heir 
and the lawyer, who had travelled down together, and were 
leaving by the afternoon train for town. 

As the boy stiode on through the early November dusk, 
he thought nothing of his inheritance, but only of the Christ- 
mas holidays, when he would once more see little Madcap — 
that was her name, as she had been careful to tell him. in the 
corner — Madcap Eyre. 




/ 


CHAPTER VIII. 


From' the moment that Mr. Eyj£.hacl shut the police out, 
he had admitted no one to his house save a stout kitchen 
wench, whom he had himself fetched from the village,- and 
installed in the kitchen, forbidding her to move beyond it, or 
to receive company therein, on peril' of her instant dismissal. 
He did the foraging himself, and would stalk in with an arm- 
ful of loaves and flesh, but the only culinary point upon which 
he showed anxiety was the child’s bread and milk, and this a 
he would have boiled to a nicety, Standing over her so as ,to j 
‘confound the woman, who had hitherto only curtseyed to him, 
trembling from afar. 

No trifle that affected the child’s health or happiness was 
beyond his care or dignity ; in .the recesses of the scullery 
the woman often marvelled how “master” managed to keep 
her so clean and neat, sinOe, by all accounts, he had never, 
troubled himself about his other children, or probably seen 
one of them dressed or undressed in his life. 

One room only had been kept sacred from the detectives 
and other seekers ; this was the bedroom of the late Mrs. 
Eyre. Mr. Eyre went to it some two or three times daily, 
but spent the greater part of his indoor existence in the nur- 
sery, where, in feeding, washing, dressing, and amusing 
Madcap’s child, he found himself sufficiently busy. 

He could not endure to call in some rough village girl to take 
charge of her ; he had written to town for such a person as he 


28 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


wanted, and meantime he could leave the child alone as often, 
as he pleased, always happy, always singing, in all things the 
dawn of that other bright, fondly-cherished Madcap, whose 
spring and early summer time had belonged to Mr. Eyre. 

He found his own independence of thought and power of 
endurance curiously reproduced in this little child of hardly 
three years, and perhaps was the more drawn to her that, 
though outwardly Madcap’s very copy, inwardly she was him- 
self, with his own strain of character, courage and will. 

He blessed Josephine that at least she had not taught the 
child fear — however negligent or unprincipled the French- 
woman might have been, she had clearly not been unkind to 
her, and she had kept the child’s person and linen exquis- 
itely, so that Mr. Eyre had no trouble on the score of 
clothes, and with clumsy hands kept her as fresh and clean 
as a new pin. 

When, on the night after his return, she kneeled up close 
to his breast and said her evening prayers, he hearkened to 
her like one in a dream ; how long ago was it he had heard 
such words ? 

“ In the Kingdom of Thy grace 
Give Thy lamb a little place ! " 

It had been something like this that Dody was saying one 
morning when he surprised the young mother and her boys 
together, and he had harshly sent them away from her. 

O ! Heavens, how cruel he had been to her ! He knew 
now what it must have cost her to unwind Dody’s arms from 
about her neck, how his stifled sobs must have wrung her 
heart as the little brothers went heavily away. . . . She had 
said to him once that he knew not the kingdom of love he 
missed in his children. Ay, but those were boys, and this 
was Madcap, and the only true love, the universal love, was 
as far from Mr. Eyre’s heart now as ever. 

The old jealousy of his character, too, was strong in him 
yet ; he had winced that day when the child ran to the heir 
(for of the little pantomime by the grave he was ignorant) 
and kissed him ; he was jealous even of Doune, whose name 
she mentioned with love in her confidences, revealing her 
brother in a new light to that in which Mr. Eyre had viewed 
his silent, stubborn son. 

To-night, when she had fallen asleep in her little cot, Mr. 
Eyre sate for a while watching her as a poor man may who 
hugs himself in the joy of a miraculously found treasure ; 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


^9 

then, taking a light, went to his wife’s room, and, as usual, 
sate down, bent oix unriddling the puzzle that room con- 
tained. 

Sooner or later, he was convinced that h;s mind would re- 
cover the lost clue that so eternally baffled him. Some day 
he would remember something that had happened in this room 
on the night of the murder, and that he had forgotten ; for 
the knowledge was in his brain — perchance in some diseased 
cell of it, but it was there — and he knew it. 

Next day he got a: message from the sea. A wretched 
stowaway in an outward bound coaling-ship was discovered 
within twenty-four hours of its sailing, and when they dragged 
him forth he came unresistingly enough, for he was dead. By 
a -letter found in his pocket, addressed to him at Lovel by a 
London firm of seedsmen, he was at once identified, and the 
ship put back to leave the body at the seaport village 
whence the captain had unwittingly brought him. The re- 
ward set on his head by Mr. Eyre made the man’s body a 
valuable one, and a messenger to the Red Hall (only a dozen 
miles distant), soon brought its master to the ship, and to the 
narrow bunk where lay all that remained of a once faithful 
servant. But though Mr. Eyre found intense horror and fear 
stamped on the gardener’s features, he could not detect the 
look of the murderer who leaps into Eternity, fearing to come 
face to face with his victim. 

But none held with Mr. Eyre’s belief in the man’s inno- 
cence, and it was only by the exertion of great influence that 
Digges obtained Christian burial, for on all sides, and by her 
husband’s friends and foes alike he was accepted as the 
murderer of Mrs. Eyre. 


CHAPTER IX. 

Mr. Eyre was now at leisure to think about Hester 
Clarke ; but on inquiry at the house in which she had lodged, 
he heard that she had left the place on the morning after the 
funeral of Mrs. Eyre and her child. She had announced her 
intention of joining her former servant, Janet Stork, now un- 
dergoing penal servitude for the murder of Hester Clarke’s 
child. Mr. Eyre asked if there had been any interview be- 


3 o EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 

tween the woman Clarke and Lord Lovel the night before 
she left. 

“ Woman , sir ! ” said Mr. P'yre’s tenant, as if she felt 
keenly his insult to the whole sex ; “ well— none but a woman 
would have spent a whole November night face downwards 
on wet sods. When I got her home at dawn there was as 
little life in her as her worst enemy Would have wished.” 

“ She saw Lord Lovel before she left ? ” Said Mr Evre, 
reading the woman’s soul like an open page. 

“ Ay — but I don’t know all he said to her. It seemed to 
me (from a word or two I caught) as if they was agreed to 
shield some guilty person ” — here the woman’s cold eyes 
scanned Mr. Eyre. 

“ So whatever secret knowledge Frank had, Hester shares 
it,” thought Mr. Eyre, looking round at the humbly furnished 
room that he had only hitherto seen from the outside, then 
turned to the woman and said, — 

“ You have heard from Hester Clarke ? ” 

“ Ay — once by whiles.” 

“ She has thoughts of coming back ? ” 

“ That’s as may be. There’s some to whom she’d be 
none so welcome.” 

“Tell her when ydu write,” said Mr. Eyre, “that the 
sooner she comes home the better, and if she doesn’t, that I 
shall go out to fetch her. We have some scores to settle, 
she and I.” 

“ I’ll tell her, sir,” said the woman, dropping an abrupt 
curtesy as he opened the door to depart, “but I think the place 
as hardly safe for- her — she’s best w'here she is.” 

“ But she wall come here all the same,” said Mr. Eyre, 
carelessly. 

“ So you never thought her guilty ? ” he added, his eyes 
reading the woman!s soul. 

“ She ? ” said the woman, incredulously. “ I got to 
know her through and through in the six months she was 
here — and she w f as a good woman to her heart’s core.” 

But Mr. Eyre thought of Madcap, and how she might be 
alive now but for Hester Clarke’s crossing his path, bringing 
to light a buried sin, and his stern features darkened as he 
turned to go. 

“ She has bribed you, I suppose,” he said. “ Well, give 
her my message when you write,” and he went out. 

The woman stood looking after him awhile as he mounted 
his horse and rode away, the hatred of her glance dving out 


E YE EPS A CQ UITTAL. 3 x 

in slow, bitter tears, that seemed to furrow her cheeks as they 
fell. 

“ Loved her, wronged her, hated her, and would have 
hanged her if he could — he tried hard enough,” she muttered 
aloud as Mr, Eyre disappeared; “ and Hester never did him 
any harm, never meant any, but just stayed on and on, be- 
cause she couldn’t tear herself away from his child, the image 
of her own.” 

But Mr. Eyre as he rode homewards thought little of the 
woman’s significance of manner, his mind was occupied with 
the main fact that Hester Clarke was within reach of a six 
weeks’ voyage, and that at any given time he could lay his 
hand on her, and this certainty enabled him to turn without 
haste to the re-modelling of his establishment and other af- 
fairs that had fallen somewhat into neglect during his long 
absence. 

To be sure, he had left an agent in charge of his estate, 
and the man had done well, but not too well, so that Mr. Eyre 
for many days found duty out of doors, after which he took 
his pleasure within. 

The nurse had arrived from town, a woman in early mid- 
dle age, who had lost both husband and children, and so 
understood little Madcap, who now occupied her new nurseries 
opposite Mr. Eyre’s bedroom, so that he could see her at 
any moment, whether he crossed to her, or she to him. 

Where he had laid his life down, three years ago, he now 
took it up, without a lost stitch ; nothing was omitted or for- 
gotten, and when he took his place on the bench with his 
brother magistrates, it was with the old impulse of admiration 
that they welcomed him. 

He had done amiss, but in their thoughts they had wronged 
him, and the Duke’s example was not to be gainsaid ; 
while those who had a secret sin or two on their consciences 
felt the more warmly to him, as one who had vicariously 
borne their punishment, so that the attitude of the whole 
county was friendly, and a considerable surprise to Mr. Eyre. 
This was the second time that he had rehabilitated himself in 
his world’s esteem ; and Colonel Busby, standing aloof, 
mused to some purpose on the folly of human nature, though 
to very little effect on his own. 

His curiosity was so insatiable that he could not give up 
visiting at the Red Hall, and so consenting to the iniquity of 
Mr. Eyre’s presence among his peers ; but he found little 
enough to reward his investigations there. Mr. Eyre’s life 


3 * 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


was that of a simple, everyday country gentleman of large 
estates, who devoted all his spare time' to 3, little daughter ; 
so that often you would meet the pair on foot, or even on 
horseback, she on the saddle before him, with the reins in 
her hands(though he held them too), and delighted with the 
fancied skill that urged on or restrained the favorite black 
that Mr. Eyfe invaribly rode. 

They came to be a familiar enough sight in the village, 
where formerly Mr. Eyre had been rarely seen, save by his 
wife’s side ; and the women pitied and the men forgave him 
his past as, day by day, he went among them, always with 
the little child, whom he led carefully, and not as ignorant 
or heedless mothers do, suffering them to fall into danger ; 
while his arms were ever ready to receive her when she 
showed fatigue : and in all this no touch of ridicule attached 
itself to the stern, proud man. 

She was so fearless, and his own fibre was so strong in 
her, that any one but he might have taken her courage for ob- 
stinacy ; but he knew better, and by no restraint or harsh- 
ness would have shaken a feather from the crown of inde- 
pendence that sate so well upon her baby brows. For when 
the child came to him in the depths of his despair, he got a 
glimpse of a life beyond — as a streak of light on the ocean 
will show to one who stands in the darkness on a storm-tossed 
promontory ; and beyond himself he saw something for which 
he might live, while for himself he could only die. 

Here was the aftermath of his life, as the furze cropped 
by the lambs in spring bursts out defiantly in golden autumn 
blossoms, delighting the gazer with unexpected riches, and 
knowing itself secure from any such second destruction. 

By the time little Madcap was grown up, the story of her 
mother and his own sin would be forgotten ; and as he had 
shielded her mother from that knowledge, so he would make 
shift to shield her daughter after her. 

Already he was used to the strong fresh current of healthy 
life that a child brings with it, already he was learning the un- 
selfishness that a child’s daily presence teaches one, and by 
degrees his soul and mind opened to the beauty and precious- 
ness of that “ children’s kingdom ” that is ever among us, and 
by which we might keep our hearts pure and undefiled, would 
we but enter it oftener. 

For in the love for little children is no passion, only a 
yearning tenderness, through which the universal, the only 
true love is learnt ; and those who watched Mr. Eyre said 


AYER'S ACQUITTAL . 


33 


that the will of the man was learning submission to his 
Maker through his heart, and that by the hand of a little 
child was he being led back to God. 

For every Sunday you would see the pair in church, though 
in his wife’s lifetime he had not gone there a score of times, 
and this regularity of attendance had been inaugurated by 
the little one herself in those first days when Mr. Eyre was 
entirely her slave. 

“ Bells going — church time,” she had said, standing still 
to listen, the first Sunday morning after Mr. Eyre’s return. 
“ Come along,” she added, pulling at his hand ; and so they 
went through the village together, past the older Madcap’s 
grave and Frank’s fresh one, appalling the sanctimonious and 
rejoicing the villagers by the unorthodoxy of their appear- 
ance. 

I think that most of us are conscious of a desire some- 
times to be able to go back to the traditions and beliefs of 
our youth. . . . A line from an old hymn, the turn of a well- 
remembered tune will for a moment renew in us the devout, 
unquestioning faith of our early years, so that we return to 
our everyday life with a curious sense of its worthlessness 
and our shame. And as a man who thrusts a cup of healing 
from his lips, crying out that he loathes though he has never 
tasted it, so until now Mr. Eyre had disliked children — those 
crystal shapes that, so long as we do not try to cast them to 
our own mould, keep their Divine freshness. . . . His books 
became stale to him beside this fresh and exquisite page of 
childhood, over which he gathered fresh draughts of strength 
and happiness as he read. To hear her sing, in that little, 
pure, thin, sweet voice, unlike anything else in the world 
(and that is to sound what the freshness of dawn is to morn- 
ing) gave him a queer tliTill of joy ; while her prayers, said 
at his knee, brought to his eyes that intolerable smart which 
is a strong man’s way of weeping. 

“You not a bad man,” she cried, one night, in a passion- 
ate burst of tears, when some hasty expressions of anguish 
escaped him ; and in this, perhaps, lay her strength, that she 
trusted and was absolutely fearless of him, as her mother had 
been ; so that she reinstated him in his self-esteem, and, se- 
cure in the worship of the only thing he loved, Mr. Eyre 
faced his world defiantly, as of old, not caring one rush for 
its evil or good opinion. 

Children grow towards you, men and women away from 
you ; and every day Mr. Eyre felt more secure of his treasure 


E YRE 'S ACQ UITTAL. 


34 

tested more jealously the docility, courage, and beauty of the 
spirit that had his wife’s finer qualities and his own strength. 
Harshness was not needed here, and on one occasion only he 
had nerved himself to punish her, and then by solitary con- 
finement. 

But as he turned the key on her, he felt as though it 
were his own idolized wife that he was treating thus harshly, 
and anxiously listened for the first sound from within. 

For a full minute there was silence ; then toddling steps 
approached the door, and a young, sternly rebuking voice of 
a child said through the keyhole, — 

“ Dad l are you good now ? ” 

Before the inexhaustible dignity of childhood the man’s 
sank, leaving only the better part, so that he was often en- 
gaged in offices for her that he would formerly have de- 
spised. 

But his was not that fondness for her which would, — 

Nourish the frame, destroy the mind, 

Thus do the blind mislead the blind, 

E’en with a mother’s love. 

Only as yfet he found no seeds of evil to check, nor even 
any of those outbursts of temper that he had often observed 
in his eldest son. 

If one doubts that children suffer even more keenly than 
grown people, let them read from time to time in the news- 
papers of some poor maddened child who in the unbearable 
agony of spirit that possesses him at some needlessly harsh 
reproof, or barbarous punishment, wanders out, his numbed 
helpless brain in a whirl and unable to look beyond as a grown 
person would, takes the irrevocable step that plunges it into 
Eternity. For the harsh, cruel words that would take no ef- 
fect on a man or woman are literally accepted by a child, and 
may prove the turning point of his life (if it do not drive him 
to despair), hardening firmness to obstinacy, gentleness to 
cowardice, weakness to vice . . . above all let us remember 
how quickly the real troubles of life will begin, and in these 
early years let us assure to them such happiness as we 
can. 

To such a fate as one of these Mr. Eyre had unconsciously 
done his best to drive the boy whom he took pride to himself 
that he had never punished. True, he had never beaten him, 
nor even been unduly harsh, save when the child diverted his 
mother’s attention from hbnself ; but when that mother died, 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


35 

the mother whom the boy worshipped, and who had been the 
religion of his young l ; fe, the father had not a thought to give 
to the five-year-old boy whose heart was silently breaking in 
the loneliness of his nursery, and in whose mind was slowly 
growing a repressed, bitter sense of ill-usage that might warp 
his character to all eternity. 

Doune knew that his lost younger brother Dody had been 
his mother’s favorite child : but this could not affect his silent, 
intense love for her , and full well he knew that she had loved 
him too. If she had petted his brother more than he, it was 
because the two were so utterly unlike in disposition — Doune 
all strength, Dody all sweetness — Doune passionate, proud, 
unforgiving, very rarely showing a sign of affection for even 
his mother, in all essentials the opposite of Dody, who seemed 
made expressly to win love. An impression once made upon 
the boy seemed indelible, and his father’s harshness had grad- 
ually alienated the child’s heart from him so entirely that it 
seemed impossible there could be any cordial understanding 
between them in the future. 

But the one tie that bound the boy to life, that saved him 
from some rash deed of despair, was- the baby-sister that his 
mother had left in the nursery when she went away, and Dody 
had so gladly and quickly followed her. 

It was a girl, and it had been named after his mother, and 
might grow up like her ; and hour after hour the boy would sit 
by the little frail babe, whose every hour threatened to be its 
last, so that when the boy was taken away to school he kissed 
the tiny face with a bitter black despair in his young heart, 
thinking that he would see her, too, no more. 

Mr. Eyre was entirely ignorant of the antagonism to him 
in his young son’s mind ; he had never given him half a dozen 
consecutive thoughts in his life, and, having sent him to 
school before his departure for abroad, had not even remem- 
bered him till the night of his return home. The boy was 
well enough, no doubt — as to his holidays, no doubt the law- 
yers had provided about that, or so Mr. Eyre thought, till one 
day little Madcap began talking about her brother, she having 
to all appearance entirely forgotten him until an accident 
brought him to her mind. 

Mr. Eyre was holding the younger Madcap up to the por- 
trait of the older one, which had been painted in the heyday 
of her youth and love ; but the child, after gravely looking at 
it, shook her head, and said, — 

“ I don't remember her ! ” 


3 6 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL . 


“ That is your mother,” said Mr. Eyre. 

“ No ! that’s a young gell,” said little Madcap, still dis- 
believing ; “ but Doony comes here every day, and talks, and 
talks, and talks to her, and sometimes he falls sound a sleep 
and Joey and me can't wake him up. P’ra’ps he doesn’t like 
to leave her up there all by her lone self.” 

The little wistful ignorant face smote Mr. Eyre with the 
first pang for his son that he had ever known, but there was 
jealousy in his voice as he said, — 

“ You love your brother Doune ? ” 

She nodded her bright head emphatically. 

“ When’s Kismus ? ” she said. “ Doony come home Kis- 
mus, and Dad shall make us a Kismus-tree ! ” 

It was now early in December, so that in a fortnight or 
thereabouts, the boy would be here ; but perhaps he did not 
realize how profound a change Doune might work in his 
everyday life till one morning when little Madcap ran into 
his bedroom, in her hand an unopened letter. 

It was addressed to her own sweet, small self, and she 
kissed it lavishly before she laboriously undid the envelope 
and permitted “ Dad ” to read it to her. 

“ Darling Madcap ” (ran this letter from the eight-year- 
old boy laboriously written down to the comprehension of 
three years), I shall be home very soon. You get Joey to 
put fourteen apples in a row, and you eat one every day, 

- and when you come to the very last one, you will see me. I 
hear father has come home, but don’t you be afraid of him, 
he won’t beat you, and soon you’ll have me to take care of you. 
Tell Joey to be sure and dust mother’s picture every day. 1 
shall be able to do it myself without the steps soon , and tell 
Digges, with my love, not to forget the flowers for the place 
where you and I go every morning, and where we’ll go again 
when I come back. I have got you a doll that opens and 
shuts its eyes. ” 

“ I’d rather have you or Doony to talk to,” said Madcap 
the younger, wrinkling up her small nose with an air of dis- 
gust ; “ dolls never says nothink ! ” 

“ And a white rabbit,” resumed Mr. Eyre, reading ; “ and 
I’m going to teach you your alphabet ; mother taught me 
mine when I was only two. I shall make the white rabbit a 
hutch in the nursery. So that you can run in through my 
room of a morning to look at it without catching a cold, and 
I hope Joey keeps your feet dry, because poor Dody died 
from getting his feet wet, you know.” 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


37 


“ Going out without any shoes or stockings to pick a wose 
for mamma,” said little Madcap, nodding. 

“ And if you were to die, I should drown myself, and 
no one would be sorry except Digges. And don’t you cry if 
father is unkind to you — only cowards cry — and I'll take 
care of you safe enough when I come back. Good-by, and 
God bless you, my darling little Madcap, and with my dear- 
est love and a kiss, 

“ I am, your ever-loving brother. 

Doune.” 

“ Dear Dooney ! ” said the child, “ and a white rabbit ” 
— and she hugged herself all up together for joy — “ have to 
go back to my nursery now, and leave Dad — poor old Dad! 
Naughty Doony, to say you’re cross — you’re always kind to 
me, and I’m kind to you, aren't I ? ” 

But for the first time since those dimpled arms had stolen 
round his neck Mr. Eyre unloosed them, and set her down, 
his jealous soul for the first time realizing that he possessed 
only a half share, not the whole of her heart, and that Doune 
had got three years’ start of him in her love. 

From that moment the silent struggle between father and 
son began ; and in both hearts the hostile spirit burned clear 
and strong — for the man had learned no lesson, here was his 
old selfishness of character over again, and he was repeating 
the very sin (his only one in her eyes) that had so wounded 
his wife, and made her exceeding love for her children as a 
joy but half-tasted sinc'e he would not share it. 

But after that one impulse of anger against his little 
daughter because he was not the only human being that she 
loved, -he devoted himself to her more than ever, riveting her 
to himself more closely with fresh chains each day, and put- 
ting forth his every charm and power of commanding love to 
win the simple, tender heart of the three-year-old child in 
whose breast he must be first, or nothing. 

And out of the full cup of her childish tender heart she 
repaid him richly, looking to him more and each day, so that 
she even forgot Doune’s home-coming, and did not remember 
the fourteen apples that she was to count and eat, one for 
each day, though Mr. Eyre counted the very hours grudg- 
ingly, enjoying them with a zest that uncertainty always roused 
in him, though other men might meet it with dread. 

Yet his wife had been able to love, not one but three, 
equally ; she had fused children and husband alike into one 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL, . 


38 

perfect love that had filled her life with a song of joy to 
which soul and body danced a measure far beyond the powers 
or comprehension of a Mr. Eyre. 


CHAPTER X. 

Mr. Eyre did not go down to the station to meet his son, but 
sent little Madcap and her nurse, so that when the tall hand- 
some lad jumped out of the train, a little unexpected toddling 
shape rushed into his arms with a shout of joy, and kissed 
him with all her soul. 

“ Darling, ducksy Madcap ! ” said the boy, devouring the 
velvet cheek of his idol ; “ anil I ’ve got the rabbit here all 
safe — and what a smart little girl it is ! ” he added as he put 
her down. 

“ Dot a new muff, ” she said, showing her unusual finery 
with pride, “ and a new bonnet (she pushed it to one side), 
and new boots — lots of buttons, ” and she extended one pretty 
leg, and held up her petticoats to show it, “ and lots of new 
fwocks at home, haven’t I, Nan ? ” 

“ Yes, Miss Madcap, ” said the nurse, “ you’ve got ' 
plenty. ” 

“ But where is Josephine ? ” said the boy, looking at the 
woman ; “ has father sent her away ? ” and the hot blood 
showed in his cheek as he spoke. 

“ O ! no, ” said little Madcap, as her nurse hesitated ; “ 1 
think she’s sick, she’s dorn away ever so long ago. O ! what a 
dear little wabbit ! ” she added, peeping into the covered basket 
Doune carried ; and in her excitement over it, the boy’s ; frown 
vanished, and soon the young pair were driving towards 
Lovel, the nurse being seated beside the coachman, so that 
there was no hindrance to the children’s talk. * 

“How is Digges?” said the boy, presently. “I hope 
he’s brought my dog all safe, and - 

“ O ! Digges is dorn, too,” said littl^ Madcap ; “ he went 
away before Joey — ’spects something’s^ happened to him, 
poor Digges ! ” 

“ So that’s Tow my father is beginning,” thought the boy, 
with darkening brows. “ They were good enough to take 
care of Madcap for years, but he cleans them out directly he 
comes back ” — only, perhaps, he did not use these exact 
words, though this was the gist of his thoughts. 


E YRE’S A CO UITTAL 39 

“ Never mind, ducksy,” he said, as he put his young arm 
round her, “ I'll take care of you now, and we’ll have a 
merry Christmas all to our own selves, for he won’t trouble 
the nurseries.*’ 

But Madcap was too much taken up with the white rab- 
bit to notice the allusion to her father, and had, indeed, alto- 
gether forgotten him till some accident should bring him to 
her mind. 

The sun was setting in blood-red behind the furze- 
crowned rock that gave Mr. Eyre’s house its name, as the 
children approached it ; but Doune looked first towards his 
mother’s room, the window of which now stood open. At the 
house-door there were servants only to receive them ; and at 
once the boy suffered himself to be led away to the nursery, 
where, finding everything just as it used to be, his spirits 
rose, and he busied himself about looking over old belong- 
ings and arranging fresh ones. The nurse had gone to the 
garden to fetch food for the rabbit, and not until the two 
were half-way through a gorgeous tea did Madcap remember 
her father. 

Doune saw her blue eyes suddenly widen as she put the 
morsel down untouched she was carrying to her lips, and 
wondered what was coming as she lifted two dimpled hands 
in a child’s dramatic way, and, nodding with intense gravity, 
ejaculated, — 

“ Dad /” 

Doune stared ; when had he and Dody ever called that 
terrible man anything but father ? 

“ Poor old Dad /” said Madcap, in an accent of intense 
pity. “ I’se quite forgot him ; come along of me and see 
him ! ” 

She had got down from her high chair, and pulled at the 
boy’s hand as she spoke ; and though he went with her, it 
was unwillingly, and with his heart hardening at every step^ 

Mr. Eyre, busy with his steward, heard those short and 
longer steps approaching his study, but did not look up, even 
when the door opened, and the young pair came in. 

“ Dad!" cried little Madcap, rushing to her father and 
throwing her arms round his neck in an irrepressible burst 
of joy, “ here’s Doony — Doony’s come ’ome ! ” 

The boy stood where his sister had left him, and over 
Madcap’s head the eyes of father and son met, and the hos- 
tile spirit in each heart strengthened, and as the boy did ue 
stir, neither did Mr. Eyre • and if in this moment tfr 0 he 


40 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


failed in respect, so assuredly did Mr. Eyre in his duty to- 
wards the motherless lad whom he had not seen these three 
years. 

If the one had made a single step forward, if the other 
had beckoned ; or, perhaps, if the slender, dark, stubborn 
boy had borne ever such a faint resemblance to Madcap, or 
owned a tithe of Dody’s winning ways. Mr. Eyre might have 
made him some cold corner in his affections ; as it was, in 
every line of the boy’s defiant face and figure, he saw himself 
— that ugly self, from which he had lately turned away with 
loathing. 

The scene that made father and son avowed enemies 
lasted scarcely as long as the kisses little Madcap was re- 
morsefully showering on her father. 

“ Me and Doony having tea now,” she said, scrambling 
out of the arms that held her but loosely ; “ we’ll come back 
bimeby ” — and, without a backward thought or look, ran to 
Doune, and vanished with him through the open door. 

Mr. Eyre resumed his business on the instant, as if no 
frivolous interruption had occurred ; but when the man had 
left, he went to the window and looked to see what lights 
had been kindled in the nursery wing facing him. 

There was only one in the day nursery, but Mr. Eyre re- 
membered Doune’s care of his little sister’s feet, arid had no 
fear that the two were abroad, only as he dropped the blind 
it struck him that his wife from opposite might even thus 
have watched his light, as hour after hour he sate among his 
books, leaving her lonely, save for her children. 

On the very night that she died, he had so left her on 
some paltry errand of scribbling, though 6n this occasion she 
had Lord Lovel to bear her company, and to Mr. Eyre the 
hours had passed unheeded, till the cry of murder roused 
him, and he had ascended the private staircase to find her 
unconscious, and stabbed to the heart. 

But to-night the neglect lay not with him, but with Mad- 
cap’s daughter, who had not a thought to give to the man 
who presently ate his solitary dinner and dessert without a 
ripple of the tender voice that had been wont to adorn it. 
His dinner hour had been put back to six in recognition of 
her bedtime, which was seven ; but eight had struck, and 
Mr. Eyre was in his study, when a knock at the door 
sounded, and Madcap’s nurse set her down inside it, half 

‘‘n and bundled-up in shawls. She climbed on to his 
^h difficulty, and pushed his book away. 

wore 


E YRE'S A CQ UITTAL. 


4i 


“ Come to say my pairs ! ” she said ; and the next 
moment had fallen sound asleep on his shoulder. 

Mr. Eyre signed to the woman to go, and with exultation 
thought that at least the child had remembered him twice in 
all the rapture of Doune’s return ; and when in half an hour’s 
time he carried her back to the nursery 7 , he had so far softened 
towards the boy that had they met then a better feeling 
might have been established between them. 

But Doune was not there ; with jealous heart, and count- 
ing each moment an Eternity, he had for a long while waited 
his little sister’s return, but when half an hour had passed he 
went where he had always gone when in trouble — to his 
mother’s picture. No matter that the room was in darkness ; 
she was there , a living, abiding reality to him, and all things 
good and evil in his heart he laid before those lovely 
mother’s eyes that never failed to bring healing to his soul. 

“ Mother,” he said aloud, and with his hand on the pic- 
ture, “ she is my little baby ; you gave her into my charge, 
and I’ve taken care of her, and now father’s taking her away 
from me, as he used to try and take you away. If only you 
could come down and speak to me, mother, mother ! ” 

But next morning broke fair and bright, and the boy 
was wakened by little Madcap, who ran in guiltless of offence, 
and when they had breakfasted together went out on one of 
those delightful rambles that included every kennel, piggery, 
and dove-cot upon the estate. The boy missed Digges at 
every turn ; but, as by Mr Eyre’s express commands Doune 
was kept in ignorance of what had lately occurred, he sup- 
posed that Josephine and her husband had been sent away for 
some fault displeasing to his father. 

Doune’s spirits had been steadily rising all the morning, 
and when, with blooming roses on their cheeks, they returned 
home a little after one to find a real schoolboy’s dinner ready 
in the nursery, Doune (who had been dreading lunch with 
his father) threw off the last of the jealous fears that had 
tormented him over night, and, kissing his “ darling, ducksv 
Madcap,” sate down with her joyfully to their feast. 

Nothing had been forgotten that a boy fresh from school 
could desire, and the nurse smiled as she served him, and 
Madcap thumped the table approvingly with her spoon when 
he had three helpings of pudding. 

The woman thought Mr Eyre was behaving very well in 
thus giving up the child to her brother, not knowing that he 
as equally avoided the appearance of jealousy as hitherto he 


42 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


had avoided its reality, regarding it as a despicable vice of 
the weak, not one that ever attacked the strong. He re- 
mained within doOrs all that day: but none came to disturb 
him, though afar off he heard the children’s voices, and even 
caught a glimpse of them once or twice in the garden. 

He recognized the carefulness that housed Madcap safely 
before the dews fell, and when lights were kindled in the op- 
posite wing, he wrapped himself in his cloak, and went 
through the village to a spot that he rarely left unvisited for 
a day. 

But others had been before him on this occasion, for a 
wreath of daisies lay on his wife’s grave, and sprigs of sweet- 
smelling things laid here and there by a boy’s forward hand ; 
and Mr. Eyre thought jealously that his son claimed the older 
as well as the younger Madcap, though she had never for 
one second placed her children before her husband. 

Or so he had believed — did he believe it now, when the 
living Madcap was shouldering away her mother’s image, and 
his thoughts to-night were less of grief for the lost than jeal- 
ousy for the living ? 

His life was emphatically a march onwards. He could 
die ; but he could not stagnate ; and stagnation seemed to 
have come to him to-night, as he told himself that Doune was 
first, would always be first, in the child’s heart. And if so, 
then, no matter what it cost him, he would leave her, let her 
cling to Doune, make him her sole idol ; for hi?nself \ no 
second place in any human heart would he accept. 

But when, long after his dinner hour, Mr. Eyre reached 
his study to find a token of little Madcap’s late presence in 
the shape of a dropped shoe-knot, he picked it up, and half 
forgave her, though not the faintest idea crossed his mind to 
return her good-night visit. 

Next day was cold and wet, and the children did not stir 
abroad ; but, lest dulness should draw her to him, Mr. Eyre 
went out for a long ride, that lasted till after dark, and on 
his return knew well enough that' no such spasm of recol- 
lection as had seized her the night before had reminded 
her of him to-night. 

For a child of three is essentially one-idead, and has 
no memory (save at odd moments) ; it goes where love is, 
but rarely seeks it, so that Mr. Eyre receded into the 
background, and Doune occupied Madcap’s whole thoughts 
that night. 

The man had girded up himself to the fight; but who 


E YRE'S ACQUITTAL 


43 

can fight with a child’s whim ? Fickle ? No more natural 
phase of Nature can be found than a healthy child ; and 
Nature knows np such word as such faithfulness, and in 
its yen'- elements is opposed to the strained idea whose 
breath has brought about half the tragedies the world has 
ever seen. 

But as Mr. Eyre’s jealousy grew, Doune’s slackened ; 
so that the boy in his turn softened towards his father, and 
prompted those excursions to the other side of the house, from 
which each day she returned more quickly, with no account to 
give of herself save that Dad was “ busy.” 

The boy was honorable, and never tried by word or look 
to set her against her father. There was no bad blood in 
his veins, and with other treatment he would have grown up 
the noble “ might, have been ” of Mr. Eyre’s own youth. 

But while the children played, and were happy, he was 
unconsciously preparing his revenge in the invitation he had 
carelessly given the young Lord Lovel, and which he had 
supplemented by a letter to his mother, the answer to which 
he received a week after Doune’s return. 

“ She would be only too rejoiced to send the boy to Mr. 
Eyre ; he always drove her mad during the holidays, and no 
doubt at the Red Hall he would be able to rampage to his 
heart’s content, and her own young babies required all her 
care, and her health was so terribly indifferent, etc., etc., and 
she could never stand more than a week in the country even 
for dear Algy (her new- husband) and his hunting ; ” and in 
conclusion, her son (who seemed to have come in for nothing 
but a house and an empty title, which his father never expected ) 
* would arrive at his guardian’s house the very next day, by 
a certain train that she was particular to mention. 

Mr. Eyre smiled grimly as he read the letter and thought 
of the writer, a faded beauty who at thirty-five had taken for 
a rich second husband her first love, and hated the boy who 
reminded her hourly of that first loveless union. 

Mr. Eyre ordered little Madcap’s late room (opposite his 
own) to be made ready, and the same day drove over alone 
to meet Lord Lovel’s heir. 

Doune heard by chance of the expected arrival, and 
thought bitterly that it was like his father to give the welcome 
to a stranger that he refused to his own son. 

No doubt the fellow would be a proud, supercilious ass, 
would look down on his own and Madcap’s pursuits, and this 


44 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


would be so much the better if he would only stick to Mr. 
Eyre’s own side of the house, and not trouble them. 

Doune said nothing to his sister — ho\^ could she under- 
stand ? Ai d he did not know that the two had already met 
at Lord Lovel’s funeral and become friends beside his grave. 

Meanwhile Mr. Eyre received the boy, who came eagerly 
to meet him, thinking of little Madcap, and rejoiced to escape 
from the tyranny of holidays in Eaton Square. 

As Mr. Eyre looked at the clear-faced lad, sunny-haired, 
and “ bright of blee,” as all the Lovels were, it struck him 
for the first time that he and Doune could not be more than 
a year apart in age, yet how different in looks, bearing, and 
attractiveness. 

Mr. Eyre thought he might have loved such a son as this, 
as they went back together to the Red Hall, for the boy was 
fearless of him, and had, moreover, taken a liking, weeks 
ago, to the stern-faced man against whom his mind had not 
yet been poisoned by scandal. 

Doune heard the carriage return, and listened sullenly 
for a summons to go below; but none came, and Madcap 
and he had their short evening alone as usual, until suddenly 
“ Dad ” popped into her head, and down she jumped from 
her high chair to go to him. 

Doune wrapped her up with his usual jealous care, and 
saw her depart in the nurse’s arms ; then sate down with 
darkening brows, and the old bitter feelings rising in his 
heart. As he had felt when his mother died, and before the 
softening influence of his little sister had come upon him, so 
he felt to-night as he sate alone and thought of how short his 
holidays were, and how completely Mr. Eyre would win her 
away from him in the end. 

By a hundred trifles, and without questioning her, the 
boy had, during the past few days, discovered how close was 
the bond of sympathy between the pair ; how in everything 
Mr. Eyre had anticipated him, even to teaching her the 
alphabet; how in every smallest detail of her nursery and 
dress Mr. Eyre’s hand appeared, and was recognized by the 
little one. 

“ Dad carries me better than you do ; ” or, “ Dad tells 
much pittier stories than you does.” Such expressions would 
now and then fall from her lips, and it required the exercise 
of all the boy’s powers to keep her beside him, and for an 
hour together forget the existence of the lonely man who 
pored over his books in the opposite wing. 


E YRITS ACQUITTAL. 


45 

Too young to understand the situation, she accepted it 
with th= unhesitating trust of childhood, and trotted from one 
to the other with a heart brimming over with love for each. 
But the servants and outsiders found the state of things be- 
tween father and son unnatural, and said there was bad blood 
between the two, because the boy knew Mr. Eyre had been 
suspected of the murder of his wife, but was not permitted 
to know that Digges had tacitly proved himself guilty of the 
crime. 

But here they erred. Doune had heard and knew noth- 
ing ; but those who loved him might well tremble for its 
effect upon him when such knowledge came. 

He was thinking of her to-night, when a step sounded 
without, followed by a chuckle, that announced Madcap. 
And the boy started up, thinking it was his father ; but a tall 
lad brought in the child, who ran to Doune, crying out, — 

“ Doune, Doune, here’s that nice ’ittle boy me saw at the 
fooneral ! ” 

The two lads, near of a height, though there was a year 
between them, offered in appearance a most striking contrast, 
as for a moment, boy-fashion, they looked askance at each 
other ; then the one held out his hand, and the other took it 
with an honest enough grip, and without speech or any other 
preliminaries, there was at once a good understanding be- 
tween them. 

“ What’s ’oo name ? ” said Madcap, with hands behind 
her back, and a much tumbled pinafore fully disclosed. 

“Gordon Lovel.” 

Doune looked at him earnestly. So this was the new 
Lord Lovel ; and how fondly he remembered the old one, 
the “ Frank,” who had been his and Dody’s playmate, none 
but he himself knew. 

“ Come and have a ride on my rocking-'orse,” said little 
Madcap, pulling at Gordon’s hand ; and so the two boys 
were given time in which to take each other’s bearings, as 
the best sort of boys always will before rushing into a friend- 
ship that is no true one if it do not last a lifetime. Doune 
had endured his schoolfellows, but never had a real boy 
friend, neither had Gordon ever found one completely to his 
liking, so that before the evening was over, and in spite of 
Madcap’s frivolous interruptions, the two boys had got so 
good a glimpse into each other’s minds as made them part 
reluctantly, and with eager thoughts of the morrow. The 
three children breakfasted together, and it was afterwards 


4 6 E YRE'S A CQ UITTAL. 

that Mr. Eyre’s ui intentional revenge upon little Madcap 
began. 

The boys, entirely taken up with one another, found the 
three-year-old child in their way ; and, though both adored 
her, presently found an excuse to take her back to the house, 
then rushed away from her laments and spent their morning 
gloriously. 

For there are so many perils and dangers into which 
mettlesome boys of eight and nine can get, even in a morn- 
ing’s excursion round a small estate, and so many pursuits 
through which a baby might not be carried, or how could 
they have climbed, leaped and raced with the little one toiling 
behind them ? 

And they were happy, as boys can be happy, as man, 
woman, or girl never was nor ever will be ; and of all heart- 
some, healthy sights commend me to a lad who, in the full 
flush of his youth and vigor, follows those innocent pursuits 
that are storing up strength within him against his manhood. 

Mr. Eyre had seen the premature return, heard the child- 
ish sounds of lament, saw the little figure that ran, with socks 
down at heel, after the retreating boys, returning shortly with 
every sign of grief and disorder, and sobbing her heart out 
as she climbed the steps that led from the garden to her 
nursery. Surely she would come co him, Mr. Eyre thought ; 
but she did not, and presently he swallowed his pride and 
went to her, though not even he could heal the wound her 
brother’s desertion had inflicted upon her faithful heart. She 
permitted herself to be consoled at last, and even ran with 
smiles to meet the faithless ones when they appeared ruddy 
and hungry in the distance. 

Doune snatched her up and kissed her fondly, then, see- 
ing his father beyond, felt the color of his spirits change ; 
but Mr. Eyre demolished a difficulty, and established a right 
order of things by including both boys, in his inquiries as to 
how they had amused themselves that morning. 

Doune flushed and was tongue-tied for awhile ; it gave 
him a new sensation to address the father who had not 
spoken to him for three years, but he forced out a few words, 
so that Gordon saw nothing amiss, and, liking both, was struck 
once more by the extraordinary resemblance between father 
and son. 

But if Mr. Evre did not hold himself aloof from the chil- 
dren, he never intruded on them. 

They could come to him when they pleased ; but he never 


EYRES ACQUITTAL. 


47 


went to them ; their meals, their hours were different, and, 
having resumed his duties as magistrate, there were days 
when little Madcap seeking him for consolation, found none, 
so that thus early there were thorns in her babyish lot, and 
she learned t&jsuffer before she understood the meaning of 
the word. 

For that first day in which she found herself neglected 
had, with variations more or less cheerful, repeated itself 
during the ensuing fourteen, so that sometimes Madcap 
would be carried first by one boy, then the other, through all 
sorts of adventures, and anon found herself neglected for 
some rat-catching or bird-snaring exploit, from which her 
small presence was rigoriously tabooed. 

But, no matter what might have been their shortcomings 
to her during the day, of evenings they were her devoted 
slaves, and would play at every game possible to the whim 
or intelligence of a three-year-old child. 

Hide and seek was perhaps the favorite one, and bursts 
of merriment would often be wafted to Mr. Eyre on the other 
side of the house, who about this time marked an almanac 
with the date at which a reply might be expected to the mes- 
sage he had sent Hester Clarke. 

For if she would not obey his summons, he had made his 
mind up that he would go to her immediately. 

And little Madcap ? Well, she had disappointed him, as 
her mother had never done, and he loved her, to be sure, 
but 

And yet it wanted only the touch of two velvet lips, the 
love and trust of two gentle arms around his neck, to make 
the strong man weak as water, and vow to forego vengeance, 
if only he might hold the first place in the heart of his lost 
Madcap’s daughter. As the holidays drew to a close the 
boys were more than ever inseparable and one day Mr. Eyre 
asked Doune if he would like to join young Lovel at Eton 
after Easter, to which Doune replied in eager affirmative, 
coloring for joy, but too tongue-tied to utter the gratitude 
he really felt 

But a better feeling had slowly grown up during the past 
weeks between the two, that Gordon’s sunny temper and ways 
had done much to promote ; for his was exactly the right in- 
fluence for Doune, and came, too, in the very nick of time, 
and when it was most urgently needed. Nothing morbid 
could live in the healthy atmosphere Gordon made around 
him ; while for Doune's strength of character and brilliancy 


EYRE’S ACQUITTAL. 


48 

of intellect the elder boy had the deepest admiration, so that 
the bond between them was one of unbroken harmony from 
the first. 

Often they would talk of what they would do when grown 
up, and, living so close together, not a day passed but the 
boys went through the Lovel woods, sometimes even enter- 
ing the house itself, and roaming through its neglected, deso- 
late rooms, invariably ending in a visit to Job, who sate by 
the fireside, but would never be able to do any active work 
again. 

He had come out of his fit perfectly clear in mind, save 
for one fixed hallucination, which was, that it was not his 
young master who had been buried under the name of Lord 
Lovel, but some other man, who resembled him, and whom 
Mr. Eyre had thought fit to bury thus for some reasons of his 
own. 

He never acknowledged Gordon as the heir, but invaria- 
bly addressed him as Master Lovel, and bade him not grow 
up idle, or looking to the inheritance, as any day “ little 
Master Frank ” might walk in and claim his own. 

The boys humored him in his fancies, and he liked them 
both ; but best of all he loved little Madcap, who sometimes 
came with them, and concerning whom the old man had a 
supernatural belief that she was her mother born over again 
— that mother who had once been his master’s girl-sweet- 
heart, and who had been stolen from him by Mr. Eyre. 

So between the old and broken man and the young fresh 
child a strong and faithful love grew with the years, and by 
the time she was ten there was not a story of Frank’s beauty, 
bravery, and truth that she had not got by heart ; and he 
had become that perilous, often most disappointing, creature 
on earth — a child’s hero ; and for every flower that she laid 
on her mother’s grave she laid one also for Frank. 

* * # * 

The last few days of the holidays passed in perfect bliss 
to Madcap, for the two boys (blaming themselves for their 
neglect) took her with them everywhere ; carried her over 
wet places, but in dry ones allowed her to trot like a little 
dog at their heels, and if she got a tumble or two they were 
none the wiser, for she did not mind what bumps and bruises 
she got so long as' she might follow them. 

Neither of them could make enough of her during this 
time, and each night the boys went sore-hearted to bed and 
dreaded the parting with her more, On the night before they 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


49 


were to start, travelling together as far as town, Doune went 
to his little sister’s cot before she fell asleep and sate down 
beside her. 

“ Madcap, my. little darling,” he said, “ I’ve not been 
very kind to you these holidays ; but I’ll be better next time, 
and it won’t be long.” ... He stopped a moment, witfi that 
smarting pain in the eyeballs that is a brave boy’s way of 
crying, then went on — “ and you’ll be a good little girl, and 
get nurse to write me a letter once every week, telling me 
how you are, and I’ll write to you often, and you must love 
me always ” 

“ Oh ! yes ! ” said Madcap, “ you and Dad — and Geordie, 
she added, as an afterthought. 

“ Don’t you love me better than Dad ? ” said the boy, 
his courage giving way, and the question forcing itself out. 

“ You and Dad ! ” said the child, dancing up and down 
in her cot. “ Dad and Doony — love ’oo both ! ” and she 
kissed him fondly. 

He thought to- himself bitterly of how often he had neg- 
lected her, thus driving her to Mr. Eyre to be consoled, and 
indeed this fresh boy-love had for the time swept him off his 
feet, so that one day he even forgot his usual visit to his 
mother’s picture. 

And when the fatal moment of parting came — when Mad- 
cap, drowned in woe, was splashing Doune and Geordie im 
partially with her tears, and throttling them with her kisses, 
even then the boy could not forgive his father that equal 
share with himself in his little sister’s heart. 

“ Good-by, sir,” said Geordie, taking Mr. Eyre’s hand 
warmly ; “ and thank you for the brightest, happiest holidays 
I have ever had in my life.” 

“ Come back at Easter,” said Mr. Eyre, who really liked 
the lad in his way. 

“ Good-by, sir,” said Doune, his cold hand barely touch 
ing his father’s ; and if he had not been so tall of limb, and 
resolute of glance, his independence might have provoked a 
smile ; as it was, Mr. Eyre met him in his own spirit, and in a 
final storm of sobs from Madcap, the schoolboys departed. 


5 <> 


£ YRE'S A CQ UITTAL. 


CHAPTER XI. 

When Mr. Eyre next went to Synge Lane he found Hester 
Clarke’s reply to his message, in the form of a sealed letter 
to himself. 

It had neither beginning nor ending, and contained very 
few words ; but these were significant. 

Janet Stork was dead and she herself returning to England 
immediately. She had heard Mr. Eyre was resolved to seek 
her out, and most solemnly warned him to desist from any 
such attempt since she could not tell him more tha?i he did now 
already know of, and, for the sake of both the dead and the 
living, no power on earth should force her to open her lips 
on the subject, 

“ Justice may yet,” said Mr. Eyre, aloud, as he folded 
the letter. “ Tell her this from me when you write, that she 
shall speak, and I’ll have the whole truth from her lips yet 
before I die.” and he went out, with a curious feeling that 
the battle was beginning over again, and that the peace of 
the last few weeks had been but a rest before the coming 
struggle. So the clue that had dropped from Frank’s dead 
hand was held safe in Hester’s living one, and he would 
find and wrest it from her, though it took him a dozen years 
of search. 

She could tell him nothing that he did not know already. 
Ay, that was true enough, for he knew her guilty of the 
murder, and to-day was more rooted in his belief of it than 
ever. His spirits rose as he walked home, and pausing at 
the churchyard, he thought that in time he might even come 
to forgive Frank, whose mind had no doubt been poisoned 
against him by the woman’s lies. 

Within an hour Mr. Eyre had telegraphed to the Governor 
of the convict settlement in which Janet had died, for any 
information obtainable about the woman who had visited 
her. 

Before night the answer came back, that nothing was 
known of Hester Clarke’s plans beyond the fact that her 
destination was England, for which place she had sailed in 
the sailing-ship Arizona. 

Here was material upon which to work, but inquiry only 


E YRE'S A CQ UITTAL, 


5 * 

elicited the fact that Hester Clarke had left the ship at a 
port half-way home, though the captain did not think that 
her circumstances- warranted the loss of half her passage 
money. 

He had therefore returned it to her, and was much 
amazed when, by return of post, he received a cheque from 
Mr. Eyre, and a request for an immediate interview. This 
duly took place at Poplar, the honest bluff fellow refusing 
the money, but willing to give Mr. Eyre all the information 
he knew.' 

He said that he had heard she was going 'home because 
the friend for whom she had come out to the settlement was 
dead, and she had been heard to say. she wished she had 
died with her as she had no friends to return to in her own 
country. 

“ And her appearance ? ” said Mr. Eyre. 

“ The handsomest creature I ever saw in my life, ,? said 
the sailor, with a weatherbeaten blush that did not escape 
the other, “ but with that look on her face ” 

“ A look of guilt ” said Mr. Eyre, swiftly. 

“ Lord bless you, no,” said the honest sailor, indignantly ; 
“ she wouldn’t hurt a fly — but she looked like one who’s 
seen sorrow, and maybe worse things, in her time. I asked 
her to marry me, sir, and now the murder’s o^it — but she 
wouldn’t, and there’s an end on’t,” he added, wondering what 
this stern, dark man might have had to do with her past 
life, or what with her future ? 

“ You may thank God that she would not,” said Mr. Eyre, 
dryly. “ You will be going back before long ?” 

“ This day month.” 

“ Keep a berth for me,” said Mr. Eyre, “ for I’ll go with 
you.” 

“ The accommodation’s rough, sir,” said the man, feeling 
a curious unwillingness to set Mr. Eyre on Hester’s track. 

“ What will do for a woman, will do for me,” said Mr. 
Eyre, carelessly, and, having paid for his passage, entered 
the day and hour of the ship’s sailing in his pocket-book, 
shook the captain’s hand and left him. 

“ I wish I may be doing her no ill turn,” thought the 
honest fellow (honest and thorough as surely sailors are above 
all other men), “but I doubt if he finds her there — she’s not 
the sort of woman to be caught if she’s minded to give any 
man the slip.” But, as it turned out, Mr. Eyre was not one of 


5 2 EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 

the half-dozen passengers who sailed in the good ship 
Arizona. 

The very hour of his departure deferred to the last 
moment, that he might wish little Madcap good-by in her 
sleep, and so spare herself and him a scene of pain ; nay, at 
the very moment when, cloaked and gloved, he entered the 
nursery, he was startled to hear her singing at the top of her 
voice, the tune abruptly changing to a horrible barking 
sound that tore his heartstrings where he stood, then saw 
the child struggling to rise, and terrified, gasping, fighting for 
breath, she seemed in the act of dying before his eyes. 

He tore at the bell, cursing the nurse for her neglect, but, 
swifter than any bell could travel, the woman, when those 
shrill clear notes of singing burst upon her ear, had fled down- 
wards to order blankets and boiling water, and was back in 
the room before the look of agony had died from Mr. Eyre’s 
face as he sate with the convulsed child in his arms. 

“ Croup, sir,” she said, and whipped a bottle off the mantel- 
shelf and poured out a teaspoonful ; “ the hot water will be 
here directly,” and she poured the stuff down the child’s 
throat ; but though the hot water came as by magic, and 
Madcap’s stiffened limbs were plunged in it, dose after dose 
of the ugly brown stuff was administered before the gasping 
struggle for breath grew quieter, and the contorted limbs grew 
still. 

“ Dad, what is it ? ” she said, looking up at him once, as 
helpless he hung above her, his agony greater than hers ; 
and all his life long he never forgot that little piteous voice, 
the sight of her little terrified face in the midst of the steam 
and blankets, damp curls clinging to her brow . . . surely that 
other Madcap must see it, and blame him for ljis neglect of 
the child during the past weeks. He remembered that she 
had never been strong, though she seemed so — the little 
prematurely-born babe, that qo one had expected to live — and 
she had been running wild with the boys, and fretting over 
their departure ; and if Mr. Eyre himself had left half an 
hour earlier she would have been crying out in her misery for 
** Dad,” and there would have been none to answer. 

He swore a vow then, that if she recovered he would never 
again leave her — revenge might go, but he would care for her 
as she would have done, whose very heart and body seemed 
to tremble with his as he gazed ; and when, at last, the crisis of 
the attack was past and the child lying exhausted, but out of 
pain, in his arms, the man’s stubborn soul rose up in him, 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL . 


53 


and he recognized the God that had granted the life that He 
might have forfeited. For this demon by which the child is 
rudely shaken out of its slumber, and brought face to face with 
appalling suffering and often death, is one before which the 
strongest man, the most skilfu surgeon, must bow ; and the 
sight of the broken nerve, the child’s terror of the recurrence 
of the agony, are, even in the days of recovery, sadder still. 

The weak voice, the pallid cheek, the overheated atmos- 
phere of the room, reminded the watcher of how precarious is 
the life that has once been so threatened ; and when Mr. 
Eyre heard the last fiat of a famous London surgeon that 
nothing but the most devoted care and watching would shield 
her from constantly recurring attacks of a similar nature, he 
buried Hester Clarke and vengeance fathoms deep in his 
memory, and forbade them to rise again until summoned. 

As he sate with the child in his arms, it struck him that 
somewhere he had seen something similar, and in this very 
room. . . . and the child had been his own ; but it was dead, 
and he had come hither as magistrate, with the ministers of 
Justice at his heels, to arrest the woman upon whose knees it 
lay for the murder of his wife. 

Had the inevitable law of nature reproduced itself ? was 
God to bring the sinner’s heart to humanity through its near- 
est and best ? 

All that night Mr. Eyre watched beside the little steam- 
enshrouded figure. At daybreak the Arizona sailed ; and as 
she parted her cables her captain rejoiced that she carried 
one passenger the less than had been booked. 

Mr. Eyre himself put ship and man out of his mind, and 
on the day when he might have reached Hester’s landing- 
place was wholly engaged in enjoying the frolics of a child 
who, in the sparkle of a young March day, had recovered 
some of the brightness that she lost in an illness that, though 
five weeks old, she had not hitherto been able to forget. 

In one bitter short experience Madcap had learned the 
meaning of the word death, and shrank away from it — shrank 
even from visiting her mother’s grave, and knew safety no- 
where out of her father’s sight. 

She had been taken back to her old room opposite his, 
and not even Doune could have found the heart to oust her 
from it when, at Easter, he came back to find her languid ; 
half her beauty of rounded outlines gone, threatened daily 
and hourly with the deadly complaint that had already seized 
her twice since the one that had appalled Mr. Eyre. 


54 


HIKE'S ACQUITTAL. 


Perhaps the hearts of father and son merged their bitter- 
ness there at her side, and in their common love joined forces 
to protect her ; perhaps jealousy showed as a mean and com- 
mon thing as they watched over the little frail life that was 
the all of each ; and the first fibre of respect in Doune stirred 
to his father when, after a long watch, Mr. Eyre laid his hand 
on the boy’s shoulder and bade him go to rest. But first 
Doune went to his mother and, light in hand, looked in her 
eyes for reasons why she should so have loved Mr. Eyre. 

Perhaps the boy found them there, so that he could sub- 
ordinate himself to her happiness, and when, a few days later, 
Geordie came, her satisfaction was complete. * 

No need to tell the boys now to take care of her. Carried 
over every puddle, and up every hillside, little Madcap daily 
gaihed fresh strength and tone, so that the village folks 
smiled to see the “ master ” and the boys go by with her. The 
black drop of blood between father and son was gone, they 
said, praying Heaven that when he grew older he might not 
take the tragedy of his mother’s end amiss and read Mr. Eyre 
wrongly, as in their secret souls they themselves had done. 
Some of the women said that in making an idol of the child 
he had made a phantom of the mother, and that he was more 
“foolish” over the second Madcap than he had been over 
the first; and this was true in a sense, for, while he had felt 
himself master of his wife’s fate, here he knew himself help- 
less, and his love was all the purer that it was so much the 
less masterful. If outwardly he wore as proud a front and 
carried things with as high a hand as ever, inwardly he knew 
himself a changed man, who looked out on life with new eyes, 
and in whom the very lust for vengeance was for a time ex- 
tinguished, so that he hardly thought of the Arizona or of 
how each day his chances of tracing Hester lessened. 

About this time Mr. Eyre received a letter that puzzled 
him, since he could see no good reasons why it should be ad- 
dressed to him more than to any other person. 

It was his way to read his letters through without first 
looking at their signature, so that only at the end of this one 
did he find enlightenment, and then only of a partial kind. 

The writer said her son had joined the — th Foot (against 
her most urgent entreaties) in the thick of the Crimean War, 
that his name had never appeared among the list of killed or 
wounded, nor had his effects been forwarded to her, -though, 
on inquiry at the War Office, she had elicited the fact that he 
had been sent back to England invalided at the' close of the 


EYRE’S ACQUITTAL. 


55 


war. But home he had never come, and she feared some 
brain-injury that kept him apart from her, or that he had 
fallen into bad hands, for he was said to have a large sum of 
ready money in his possession when he sailed. The mother 
■went on to say that, having seen in a newspaper an allusion 
to Mr. Eyre’s return with the body of the late Lord Lovel, 
who had joined the regiment about the same time rs her son 
( she was able to fix the date by a letter from her boy) she ven- 
tured to write and ask if Mr. Eyre had seen or knew anything 
of him, the Colonel and more than half the officers being 
dead, and the remainder now in India. 

She added that he was twenty-three years of age, tall, fair, 
and blue-eyed, her only son, and she a widow. His Christian 
name Francis. Mr. Eyre’s memory was accurate, and he re- 
membered Colonel Lindsay’s mentioning young Methuen, 
also some odd words that had escaped Frank in dying ; but 
these he did not think worth repeating to the poor lady when 
he wrote to tell her that he had no knowledge of her son. 

He received a more memorable letter some weeks later, 
perhaps the longest one that bluff sailor, Captain Pye, ever 
wrote. 

He said he had stopped two days on his outward passage 
at the port Mr. Eyre would have visited, and had spent his 
whole time in making inquiries about Hester Clarke. Several 
people remembered her landing, as she was unveiled, and her 
beauty was so uncommon, and she was seen to enter a 
food-shop close to the harbor ; but from the moment she left 
it not the slightest trace of her could be found. Many ships, 
both homeward and outward bound, touched at the port that 
day, and the captain could only suppose that she had gone 
away in one of them. She had effected some change in her 
dress at the shop (said the woman who kept it), and veiled 
herself so closely that her features could not be seen. 

And the sailor concluded with the hope (meaning no 
offence) that since it was clear the poor soul did not wish to 
be traced, and had tried to burn her boats behind her, why, 
to his mind, ’twould be only honorable in any man not to set 
sail in pursuit of her ; and he begged to remain Mr. Eyre’s 
faithful servant, Joseph Pye. 

Mr. Eyre wrote a brief reply, in which he thanked him, 
and said that he still meant to take a sail in the Arizona one 
of these days, and should make it his business to know when 
Captain Pye’s ship was in port. But somehow, the “ con- 
venient season ” for that sail did not come. As years went 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


56 

by, and gradually little Madcap outgrew the fell complaint 
that had threatened her life so often, she still required all 
his care : and home ties and those connected with his estate 
bound him more and more closely to the life that had so fully 
satisfied him in the days before Hester Clarke came to 
trouble it. 

If now and then a restless thought rose in his mind — if 
at odd moments the old puzzle rose and confronted him, 
demanding its solution, he put it by. Perhaps some inward 
sense told him that this time of peace was but the pause be- 
fore the final struggle of his storm-tossed life. But the pause 
was a long one ; and the years went by as days to the man 
who at no period of his life had found a day too long for its 
work. 

And so in the eternal freshness of the “ children’s king- 
dom ” the man lived and renewed his youth. So by slow 
but sure degrees during these happy, healthy years the old 
antagonism between father and son died out ; for beside and 
between them stood Madcap with her love, and a hand in the 
hand of each. 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


57 


PART II. 


CHAPTER I. 

A boy was singing “ As pants the hart for cooling streams,” 
and the exquisite voice soared, as it were, to the very gates 
of heaven, then sank down and down like silver into the 
depths of a clear well — sank into the very souls of some of 
those who heard him, and, by some curious association of 
ideas, caused Mr. Eyre to start violently and lean forward to 
gaze at the singer. 

Why, this was the very boy whose voice had so enchanted 
Mrs. Eyre one hot May morning that she had compared it to 
cool rills of running water that refreshed body and soul as 
they fell ; and Mr. Eyre, who, for a wonder, had accom- 
panied her to church, had laughed, saying she only found 
the voice uncommon because in looks the boy happened to 
be a cherub. 0 

And there stood the boy, cherubic, sweet-voiced, singing 
the very same words, and looking as if he had never done 
anything but sing ever since ; and yet it was impossible that 
he should be the same. This must be a younger brother. . . . 
With a sudden gesture Mr. Eyre brushed his hand across 
his eyes, then looked around him, much as Rip van Winkle 
may have done when he wakened from his long dream. 

The boys and girls had grown into youths and maidens, 
the middle-aged folk had grown old, and many of the old men 
and women were missing from their places ; the very clergy- 
man had grown white-headed, and the clerk and sexton be- 
come bowed with rheumatism and age. 

His glance came back to rest on the occupants of his own 
pew, and again he started, for it seemed to him that his wife 
stood before him — this was not the child who had drawn 
him hither each Sunday morning ; but his lost Madcap, just 
as she had looked in the early days of her marriage, no whit 


E YKE'S A CQ i 7 7 TAL. 


5ft. 

older, or sadder, or less lovely than the girl at whom Mr. 
Eyre now so intently gazed. 

The tall handsome lad beside her was Doune, the living 
mage of what his father had been at twenty, and just then 
so deep in thought that his prayer-book had, unnoticed, 
slipped from his hand ; but it was on the fourth occupant of 
the pew that Mr. Eyre’s gaze dwelled longest, a frown 
slowly gathering upon his brow. 

The young man who had caused it to gather would 
scarcely have heeded one of Jove’s thunderbolts just then, 
for his ardent, eager eyes were fixed upon Madcap, who 
seemed unconscious of his presence and intent only on her 
devotions. 

There was too much of the lover in that look, thought 
Mr. Eyre, experiencing that odd sense of repulsion which 
most fathers know when the lover comes to woo the young 
and delicate daughter. Perhaps some jealousy is its root. 
Perhaps the father’s instinct has its origin in something no- 
bler, and he trembles for the future of the tenderly-nurtured 
creature whose truest safety 7 is by his side. 

“ I’ll have no boy and girl love-making here,” thought 
Mr. Eyre, looking keenly at Madcap, who caught the glance 
and half smiled. “ I’m first with her yet,” was the continua- 
tion of his thought, as, folding his arms and with gaze that 
went past her through the open door, he set himself to think 
of how it was that these twelve years had passed so swiftly 
that h% had taken no count of them till to-day. 

Madcap’s rearing and the gradually acquired mastery of 
Doune had occupied him a long while ; and then, to be sure, 
there were the perilous years of the two young men to be 
watched over at school and college, and his own duties 
as landowner and magistrate to be performed, and the “ triv- 
ial round, the common task ” had so filled his days, that he 
had not room even for the episodes of ambition and love that 
had on two several occasions threatened him. The first 
came when the Duke of Marmiton died, and Mr. Eyre was 
entreated in the Conservative interest to stand for the 
county ; but to such entreaties he turned a deaf ear, because 
his home-ties so closely bound him that ambition offered no 
charms to him now. 

The second episode came in the determinative siege of 
him by the Duke’s widow, a beautiful woman, with whom Mr. 
Eyre had flirted before his marriage ; and, as he would not 


E YRE'S A CQ UITTAL. 


59 

nm away, it was openly wondered that he did not marry her, 
if only to free himself from her persecutions. 

For the rest, he had without an effort won back that po- 
sition which he had once so entirely lost, and, in the eyes of 
his world, stood forth a man who had entirely lived down 
that one terrible, far-reaching sin of his youth, that in its 
consequences had so nearly wrecked his life. 

But to-day, in his stubborn heart the old fierce question 
rose like a spectre, and demanded its reply. The time of 
peace was over, and the moment for uprising at hand ; and the 
ice that during the past years had frozen hard over one hid- 
den volcano in his heart, shivered at a breath, and in that hour 
of awakening he realized that, amidst all his duties, she had 
been forgotten. Madcap saw the light flash to his eye, the 
color spring to his cheek, as rising, and making a gesture to 
them not to follow, he left the church, and walked straight 
to his wife’s grave, where he stood for awhile looking down 
on it; then plucked a daisy, and placed it beside another 
that his pocket-book held ; but with the second he laid away 
a vow. 

Ay ; but once before, and by her scarce cold clay, he had 
sworn an oath to her, and forgotten it ; he had been happy 
in his home-life, while she, who had no share in it, lay here 
neglected and alone, while, secure from pursuit, her murderer 
walked the earth. ^ 

He had been asleep, but now he was • awake , and to the 
bitter end would pursue that scheme so abruptly broken off 
by his little daughter’s illness. 

She was strong enough now, and, besides, there were 
others to love her if anything happened to himself. There 
was Doune : the boy’s splendid training at his father’s hands 
had left few fears as to his moral future ; it was only from an 
intellectual standpoint that his father had fears for him, and 
he dreaded that abuse of application to the lad’s studies that 
usually resulted in sleepless hours, and latterly in one or two 
curiously prolonged attacks of sleep-walking. But this ten- 
dency he would outgrow, and as to those issues involved in 
Doune’s future knowledge of the manner of his mother’s 
death, Mr. Eyre never troubled himself with conjectures con- 
cerning them ; the boy knew him, 'ay, and loved him, as the 
father was very well aware. 

Before he left his wife’s grave, and long before that hom- 
ily misnamed a sermon was half over, he had chalked out 
his plans, arranged his campaign, and on reaching honte had 


6o 


E YRE'S A CQ U/TTA L. 


consulted his “ Shipping- Gazette,” in which, as by a miracle, 
he found the very information he most desired. 

His daughter’s eyes had followed him as he left the 
church ; but Doune had scarcely seemed to notice his fa- 
ther’s exit, while Gordon thought that the flush on her 
cheeks, the unwonted restlessness of her movements, were 
due rather to her thoughts than Mr. Eyre’s abrupt departure. 

It was the young fellow’s last day here ; to-morrow he 
would return with Doune to keep his last term at Oxford, 
and then he would come home to settle down at the Towers. 

Gordon saw Madcap there as his wife, and he meant to 
turn the old place upside down before he took her home to 
it, which would be somewhere about next autumn, he sup- 
posed, as then she would be full sixteen years old. 

No lovers showed on the horizon ; but, with one of those 
presages of true love or fear that often we call supernatural, 
the young fellow longed for some sign or promise of love 
from her before he left on the morrow. 

He would be gone such a little while ; and surely there' 
could be no hurry ; yet, as her eyes travelled past him down 
that gradually diminishing perspective of aisle and church- 
yard that ended in her mother’s grave, he said to himself 
that he would within the hour put his fate to the touch, 
without the leave of Mr. Eyre or any other. 

As the preacher’s dull booming voice sounded faintly from 
afar, Gordon (unconsciously following Mr. Eyre’s steps) went 
through a kind of retrospect of the past twelve years, in which 
the foremost figure was always — if with a hundred variations 
— Madcap. 

If at three years he had slighted while he adored her, at 
six she had assumed airs of sovereignty to which he had sub- 
mitted, while each succeeding year gave her fresh superiority 
over the lads who grew so fast, and must pass through all 
those awkward stages of youth through which the girl herself 
danced and played without the loss of a single grace or 
charm. 

Tricksy as a brook that laughs over pebbles, but anon 
sinks into silence between high banks, with a depth of charac- 
ter that ran hand in hand with those wild madcap spirits 
from which her mother had taken her name, as cleai 
brained as she was simple, as innocent as she was strong, 
Gordon’s mind had never held but one idea of womanhood 
from his birth ; and Madcap filled it. 

His love exactly matched that pure, boyish ardent one 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


61 


that his dead cousin, Lord Lovel, had felt for Madcap’s 
mother. Sixteen and eighteen, these had been the ages of 
the young pair, and now Gordon was eighteen and the young- 
er Madcap fifteen and a half ; and why might he not speak 
and secure his happiness before some other man appeared to 
dull or destroy his hopes ? 

In her education had been included no forward thoughts 
of men, and no self-consciousness marred that virginal look 
which we sometimes see in very young girls who from their 
birth have been kept far out of the reach even of a chance 
smirch of evil, and whose souls have been left as God made 
them, not moulded to the lives of those to whom their train- 
ing has been intrusted. 

She was dressed in white, as it was Mr. Eyre’s whim 
that she always should be ; her gown was simply made, and 
reached to her ankles, while long white silk mittens that 
reached to her elbows were tied with narrow ribbons, and 
black shoes with silk stockings inside, shod the most beautiful 
little foot in the county. But when the benediction was spo- 
ken, and the young pair paced down the churchyard walk to- 
gether, while the villagers looked after them and smiled, as 
people will at the sight of love, youth, and beauty, Gordon’s 
heart sank, so that in silence they went through the little 
gate and took the path that led homeward through Lord 
Lovel’s woods, Doune having started off alone and at a great 
pace. 

Softly as those who are shod in velvet the two went, and 
this silence was so unlike his roguish, saucy Madcap that, 
trembling, he thought she must know what was on his lips, 
and that, O ! blessed and unsuspected sign of love, she was 
shy as himself. 

The young May breezes stole ruffling round their lips and 
cheeks, for here might always be found freshness and shade ; 
but even the beauty of her beloved woods could not rejoice 
the girl’s heart that day, and when presently Gordon stooped 
down to look into her averted face, he saw that tears were 
running down her cheeks. 

u Madcap /” he cried, moved to the soul Dy these signs 
of grief that must surely be for himself, “ don’t cry ; I shall 
soon be back. This is May the ioth, and I shall be back 
the first week in July — come home for good.” 

“ It’s not you.” said Madcap ungratefully, as she dried 
her eyes; “it’s — it’s Doune!” The young lover recoiled, 
and the words of love died on his lips. 


< 5 , 


£ YA'£’S A CQ UI TTAL. 


“ Can’t you see that he is killing himself with overwork ? ” 
said the girl, unheeding Gordon’s looks ; “ he has been up 
night after night all through the recess, yet he rises at the 
same hour as we do, and he gives himself 110 rest ; and now 
he is going back unrefreshed to harder work still, and he 
will take to walking in his sleep, and perhaps fall off a chim- 
ney and be killed — my dear, darling Doune ! ” 

“ He has never gone farther than the door of his cham- 
bers,” said Gordon, in unsympathetic tones ; “ the bolts always 
wake him up — besides /’mi there to see that he comes to no 
harm.” 

“ And yet you are going to leave him,” said Madcap, 
looking at him with eyes in which reproach drowned itself in 
tears ; “and who is going to pick him up, pray, if he falls 
out of - a window, or — or telegraph to get me up in time ? ” 

“You know, Madcap,” said the young fellow, coldly, 
“ that your father arranged for me to leave college one term 
before Doune did ; but if you are so anxious to get rid of 
me for six months longer, why, I will stay the last term.” 

“ Do” she said, her face clearing up ; “ and you and he 
shall come back together, and we will all be as happy — as 
happy as can be ! ” 

“ Shall we ? ” said Gordon, rather wistfully. “ I don’t 
know. I’m not given to presentiments ; but somehow I feel 
as if this were the last of our happy days, and that trouble is 
closing round us.” 

The girl started as though a chill breath had pierced the 
warm air around, and she grew a little pale as she said, — 

“ I felt like that just now; but it is only that you are 
both going away to-morrow, and so we have got out of spirits 
and superstitious. I even thought there was something 
amiss with father when he went out, and stayed so long by 
mother’s grave ; have you seen any signs of restlessness in 
him lately ? ” she added. 

Now this was the last straw on Geordie’s back. To be 
questioned about an elderly gentleman’s bodily signs when 
you are bursting with your first declaration of love is surely 
beyond the endurance of any proper man of spirit. 

“ He is getting old,” said Gordon, brusquely, and turn- 
ing his back on he > \ 

“ Old ? ” repeated the girl in a startled tone. “ Dear 
old dad is growing old ? How dare you say such a thing, or 
turn your back upon me, sir?” she added, stamping her 
foot (and here I must regretfully remark that she invariably 


EYSC&S ACQUITTAL . 63 

stamped twice, where once would have satisfied her mother), 
a flood of angry crimson rushing to her cheeks. 

“ He is getting old,” said the young fellow, turning round 
to face her, with eyes angry as her own ; “ and of course he 
has whims, and can’t sleep at night, and feels the heat in 
church. But is all this any reason, pray, why you should for- 
get I am going away, as well as Doune to-morrow ? ” 

“ Poor Geordie ! ” she said : and he felt that he hated his 
name, and wished it had been any other. “ But you will 
come back : and you are so young ; and you say he is getting 

old Why, there is no real work for which he is not 

fitter and stronger than you or Doune ! ” 

“ Thank you,” said Gordon, feeling the insult to his 
youth keenly. “ Perhaps when Doune and I are elderly 
men, there may be one or two things that we can do to your 
satisfaction.” 

“ Elderly men are so much more interesting than young 
ones,” said the girl, stooping to pluck a sorrel-leaf, and grim- 
acing as she ate it. “ But what is the matter with you this 
morning ? You look as cross as two sticks, and usually, you 
are so good tempered ” 

“ Good-tempered ! ” exclaimed the sorely-tried young 
man. “ Why, to be a good-tempered man is to be the butt 
— the fool of one’s company ” 

“ Yes — but you are only a boy,” said Madcap, slipping 
her hand through his arm as she spoke ; “ how dreadful it 
will be when we are really grown up,” and she sighed, as at 
the thought of departing joys. 

I don’t suppose any of us will grow much more,” said 
Gordon, gloomily, and feeling that his wooing was going 
from bad to worse, “ though I have heard of girls growing 
after they were sixteen.” 

“ But I’m only fifteen and a half, Geordie,” said the 
girl, almost piteously, as she looked up into his clouded face, 
and speaking as one who laments to lose something pre- 
cious ; “ don’t forget that every year I grow older, father 
gets older too — as you were cruel enough to remind me just 
now ! ” 

And youth is the time in which to enjoy yourself, and 1 
am growing older, too,” said Gordon, with, a ruthlessness that 
only the pain of love could justify. “ Are we to be children 
always , because Mr. Eyre is a quarter of a century ahead 
of us ? ” 

Madcap drew her hand away, and, with something of her 


64 & YKE'S ACQOI 7 TAL. 

father’s odd sense of awakening, looked at the young man 
before her. 

“ You are grown up, I suppose,” she said, after a minute’s 
dispassionate survey of him, “ and you have a moustache — I 
never noticed it before — and Doune has none ; but he is a 
year younger than you, and, after all, I don’t think one 
would suit him.” 

He answered nothing ; he was dumb with helpless anger 
and misery as he walked beside her. 

Her instinct, usually so fine, was at fault here ; for, pre- 
occupied by thoughts of Doune and her father, she never 
dreamed of the turmoil going forward in the breast of her 
companion, and who in her mind, and despite that unex- 
pected discovery of his moustache, was still a boy. 

“ Let us sit down,” she said, as one suddenly fatigued ; 
and Gordon felt that the sequel to his chapter of accidents 
had come, when he found himself enthroned on moss, in all 
the agony of those go-to-meeting clothes that he abhorred. 

His tall hat, at least, he might lose without indecorum, 
and this he sent flying with a vigor that nearly wrecked it 
against a neighboring tree, and brought Madcap to a more 
attentive consideration of him than she had hitherto vouch- 
safed. 

His good looks, though remarkable in themselves, were 
of that Saxon order that no one dreams of calling uncommon ; 
and he had always suffered in Madcap’s eyes from being 
placed in juxtaposition with Doune, whose keen, dark, bril- 
liant beauty was peculiar to the males of his family. 

“ Are you all bewitched together ? ” she said ; “ first 
father, then Doune, now you ? ” 

“ Yes, I am bewitched,” he said, not looking at her, and 
thinking that no man of mettle or sense ever sat down to a 
declaration of love, and certainly not with such scant encour- 
agement as was his. 

To be chaffed, to be called a boy at nearly one-and- 
twenty, to be congratulated on a moustache, as if it were a 
new doll or a pop-gun, to suggest sitting down, when he 
would have found it a better sign in her if she had run away 
from him ; were not all these things sufficient to anger even 
one of the gentle, sweet-blooded Lovels ? When he had de- 
spatched his gloves after his hat he felt better, but still looked 
cross enough to amaze Madcap, who had not the clue to his 
thoughts, and who now capped all her other misdeeds by 
bursting into a peal of laughter. 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL . 


“ Why don’t you send your coat after the rest .?” she said. 
“ I’ve seen you often enough in your shirt-sleeves — though I 
don’t find the day notRt all ; I am perfectly cool.” 

“ You need not tell me that,” said the young man, who 
had folded his arms on his breast, and now looked as misera- 
ble as he had before looked angry. “ You are always cool 
about everything that concerns vie, but you put yourself into 
a fever if your father or Doune get a finger-ache.” 

“ Why, Geordie,” she said, opening her eyes very wide, 
“ are you jealous ” 

“ My name is Gordon,” said the young fellow, crossly. 
“ Whoever nicknamed me that detestable Geordie ought to be 
shot. I may be only a boy, but I’ll be hanged if I answer to 
that name again.” 

“ Shall I call you Lord Lovel ? ” she said to him, in a 
gentle voice that made him turn swiftly to look at her ; but 
alas! 

In her fair cheeks two pits do lie ; 

and these pits were filled up and brimming over with laughter, 
as the rest of her face, and while ravishing, served only to en- 
rage him. 

“ I’ll tell you what it is, Madcap,” he said ; “ if you go on 
laughing at me this way, I’ll box your ears — or — kiss you.” 

“ It would not be for the first time,” said Madcap, placidly, 
and with a shameless disregard of her situation ; “ kissing 
me I mean. But as to the other, why that’s one of my pre- 
rogatives ; for you know I’ve boxed your ears almost ever 
since I was born.” 

“ Yes — that’s just it,” said the young man, bitterly. “I 
was fool enough to let you, whereas if I had given you a lot 
of trouble, and kept you in order, you would think twice as 
much of me now. As it is, Doune and your father make a 
double-first (he laughed angrily at his own bad joke), and I’m 
not in it.” 

“ Yes, you are,” she said, but rather coldly, for she was 
offended at the rebellion of her slave ; “ but, of course, they 
are first. And your stupid joke reminds me of something I 
wanted to ask you ; do you think Doune will pass with first- 
class honors next term ? ” 

“ Hang first class honors !” said Gordon, letting go the last 
remnant of his manners. 

“ By all means, Lord Lovel,” said Madcap, red with anger. 
“To be sure, with you it is a case of sour grapes, for you 


66 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


never had a chance of winning any ; your chief laurels were 
earned in cricket and boating ” 

“ And a very good job, too,” cut in Gordon, ruthlessly. 
“ If I had glued my nose to my books as Doune did, and not 
taken him down the river for a breather now and then, he 
would be in a mad asylum by now.” 

“ Oh ! there’s no disgrace in rowing in the Oxford Eight,” 
said Madcap, loftily, “ especially if you can’t do anything 
else ” — here Gordon bounced on his mossy seat, and felt that 
a few more minutes of this would finish him — “ but then you 
kept rats in your rooms, and 

“ Uncommonly useful they were,” said Gordon, heartlessly. 
“ I trained them to run up Doune’s legs, and they sent him 
off to bed every night a good three hours before he would 
otherwise have gone.” 

“ And you were had up before the dons ” 

“ Old asses,” interpolated Gordon, parting with his last 
shred of manners. 

“ And were nearly rusticated,” said Madcap, swallowing 
a smile, and with her voice stern as she could make it ; “ but 
that was for some disgraceful piece of business that you got 
into all by yourself, for Doune and father could tell me 
nothing about it.” 

“ That’s my business ! ” he said, shortly ; “ but I’m getting 
tired of being a mere caretaker to Doune ” 

“ A caretaker ? ” said Madcap, sitting erect, and with 
flashing eyes. “ Is he not strong and clever enough to take 
care of himself ? ” 

“ Is he ? ” said Gordon, still in that hard tone. " Well, I 
gave up the Guards to remain with him at Oxford ” 

“ I thought it was because you wished to settle down at 
the Towers,” said Madcap, whose color had begun to sink 
before the energy of the young man, so that in ten minutes 
he had gained that place in her esteem which twenty-one 
years of honest unselfish service had not brought him. 

“ I could have settled down here all the same,” said Gor- 
don. “I should have enjoyed a few years in the army down 
to the very ground — I was never cut out for pursuits such as 
Doune loves — for, as you say, I have no brains, never had 
any.” 

Madcap said nothing, but looked at him with new eyes, 
as, with averted head, he went on speaking. 

“ I am talking like a sweep,” he said, “ but you have pro- 
voked me into it, and whatever I have done for Doune, I take 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL . 


67 

no credit for it — it was not for him ” — he turned and looked at 
her, and through all his anger and trouble the yearning, eager 
look in his eyes showed like a rift of blue sky through clouds, 
and touched Madcap to the heart. 

“ We have never quarrelled before, Geordie — much,” she 
said, with a little tremble of the mouth ; “ and I do not want 
you to go — angry.” 

His face changed as one may see a field of grain that is 
colorless beneath a stormy sky, pass suddenly into a flood of 
gold, one knows not how, one knows not whence, but light is 
there . . . and so in a human soul love will work the self- 
same miracle, and Madcap drew "back startled at the trans- 
figuration her words had wrought in the young fellow’s face. 

“ Madcap,” he cried, forgetting to think of whether he 
were sitting or standing (and, in point of fact, he was kneel- 
ing), “ I have been a brute to you — but I was so jealous and 
so miserable — and you’ll forgive me, dear, won’t you ? ” he 
said, humbly, as he took the slender mittened hand, prayer- 
book and all and kissed it passionately. 

Now, if he had kept up his hard-heartedness two minutes 
longer, perhaps, if he had boxed her ears soundly, as he had 
threatened, she might have taken him as master for once and 
all “ under the greenwood-tree,” for her spirit had responded 
to his manliness f and next to her father and Doune, she had 
always loved him best — and often the second-best love ends 
by becoming the first. 

But that kiss made him once more her slave, and the les- 
son of love was as yet beyond her comprehension, since there 
was no inward teaching to enable her to learn it. . . . And 
so Gordon got a stone for bread when she said, with her 
hand still in his, — 

“ You know I love you, and I cannot bear you to go away, 
and to-morrow this time I shall be crying over you both ” 

“ Both ! ” he could have let go her hand, but that he was 
ashamed of his late outbreak, and wanted to atone for it. 
And there were tears in her eyes, rarely enough permitted by 
her three faithful henchmen. Yet he risked all as he said : — 

“ Are you crying for Doune or for me ! ” 

She looked at him with the tears in her eyes, trembling, 
but still unfallen on her cheeks, and perhaps (though so young) 
some glimmering of love came to her then, and unwittingly 
she stood on its brink perhaps (for who shall fix to a moment 
the turn of the tide, the decline of a sunset, or the meridian 
of summer ?) She might have taken the golden mount that 


68 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


led on to happiness and honor, but that some need from with- 
in, some lack from without, stayed hai\‘ 

Gordon felt that the moment was’ missed, and the oppor- 
tunity gone, as she said, holding up her face to him like a 
scolded child who seeks to make amends. 

“ You’ll kiss me, Geordie, and be ‘ friends ’ ? ” 

Perhaps the sanctity of her youth sank into him then . . 
. perhaps the thought of certain passages in his life shamed 
him . . . but as they leaned their two young heads together, 
curiously alike as a youth and maiden often are, he only kissed 
her cheek. 

Was he a fool ? I trow not. 


CHAPTER II. 

“ You have taken a long while to walk home,” said Mr. 
Eyre, as Madcap entered his study, and came quickly to his 
side. “ Had 'Gordon some entertaining story to tell you to- 
day ? ” 

He held her from him as he spoke, and looked at her 
keenly, but her color neither rose nor fell as she said, “ O ! 
no, father, but he was out of sorts and miserable, and we quar- 
relled, but it’s all right now — we’ve kissed and made friends.” 

Mr. Eyre looked at the girl’s cheek and lips, as though he 
expected to find a stain on them, then said, — 

“ Pray, what did you quarrel about ? ” 

“ He thought I cared only for you and Doune,” she said, 
hanging her head a little ; “ but I do love him — next to you 
two, better than any one in the world.” 

“ So we are first ? ” said Mr. Eyre. 

“ Yes,” she said, looking at him wistfully and tenderly, 
for with Madcap familiarity had never bred contempt in her 
for her father; “you and Doune, Doune and you.” 

“ Poor Gordon ! ” said Mr. Eyre, as, unsummoned from 
the past, a girl’s face rose up before him, unkindled, with no 
light of love on it, yet a betrothed wife, and presumably that 
of beyond the reach of any other man’s love. 

“ Child,” he said, abruptly, “ I am going away.” 

She lifted her head from his shoulder and drew back, a 
startled look in her eyes. 


E Y'KE'S A CQUITTAL. 69 

“ Going away, dad ? ” she said, her voice chilled by that 
curious foreboding that had dwelled in her mind all day. 
“ Are you going up with the boys ? ” 

“ No,” he saicr^* 'further than that — at the outside, I may 
be away for two months.” 

Two months ! And, save for that one flying visit to Pop- 
lar, he fc^ad not slept out of his bed a single night these twelve 
years ; an^ tears were in Madcap’s eyes as she said, — 

Where are you going, father ? ” 

Here was a question he had not anticipated, but his an- 
swer came without a pause. 

“ram going on business — business connected with your 
mother.” 

“ Is it so urgent ? ” she said, looking anxiously in his face. 
“ Can anything do her any good now, or make her happier 
than she is ? ” 

“ Yes, it is^ urgent enough,” he said, not heeding her last 
question ; “ and yet it has been waiting for my attention these 
twelve years. I have been supine, in my dotage ; but I’m 
awake now ; and you’ll be happy enough, child, while I’m 
away.” 

“ was it that said that 1 a woman of forty is only 
beautiful 3:0 those who have loved her in her youth ? ’ ” he 
said, gettifig up and pacing restlessly the room. “ And she 
would be verging towards that by now — yet more lovely than 
you are, or ever will be.” 

He looked searchingly at the girl, who had paled but not 
shrank before this new and unsuspected phase of his charac- 
ter, then said, — " 

“ Does not the fashion change once in twelve years ? For 
see here ” — he unlocked a drawer and brought out a full- 
length miniature — “ here is her very dress — her hat — just as 
she wore them to church on the first Sunday after our mar- 
riage ; and you are wearing their very doubles (he held 
the portrait out as she advanced to look) — “ but the photo- 
graph itself is a wretched daub, and you’ll never get any real 
idea of her from that, or her picture. You must look in the 
glass if you want to see her image.” 

“ Am I so like her, father ? ” said the girl, looking at him 
steadfastly, and subduing each sign of alarm at the excitabil- 
ity of manner visible in the usually cold, proud man. 

“ Yes,” he said, looking at her fixedly, “ you are so like 
her that you have retnmded me of her. Good God ! to think 


y 0 E YRE'S A CQ U1 TTAL. 

she has lain out yonder cold and forgotten — forgotten through 
twelve years.” 

“ No,” said the girl, firmly, “ she has never been forgotten 
- — not a day has passed that I have not laid flowers above 
her; and when Doune was at home we went together.” ' . 

“But I laid none,” said Mr. Eyre; “ though I have 
plucked a daisy or two ; and her blood cries out to me ” 

“It is at rest,” said Madcap, softly ; “and though we 
shall go to her, she will not return to us ; and there are the 
living to think of, as well as the dead.” 

“ You will do well enough without me, child,” skid Mr. 
Eyre, grimly : “the book of youth is more suitable 
reading than that of age, and to-day I’ve woke up to the fact 
that I am over fifty, and that whatever work I have to do, I 
must do quickly.” 

“ You are not old,” she said, with tears in her eyes, as 
she remembered Gordon’s words ; “ you are a dear, handsome, 
darling Dad, as you always were, and ever will be ” — and 
with a sob she reached up her arm and caught him as he 
would have passed her. 

“ No, no, child,” he said, “ I am old — I hav^oMed at 
myself in the glass, and there are two lifetimes at feast be- 
tween you and me. There was only one between me and 
your mother, so to-day she seems nearer than you are. And 
you will be happy enough with the boys — she was never as_ 
happy with hers as with me.” 

He was walking quickly to and fro as he spoke, 

Madcap with the signs of excitement that pointed surely to 
brain mischief ; but he caught the fear in her eyes as it rose, 
and said — 

“ I’m sane enough, child — but to wake out of a sleep, a 
sleep of twelve years, to find so much left undone that ought 
to have been done ” 

“ But have you not done much ? ” she said, her young 
voice unconsciously stern ; “ have you not made your chil- 
dren happy, and would she have wished more ? ” 

“ So I have made you happy, Madcap,” he said, looking 
at her, “and whatever sins may be on my shoulders I can 
tell her that when I see her. And now we’ll go to lunch, 
and after that I have business to do, though it’s Sunday, and 
then we’ll go for a walk instead of to church, and I’ll tell 
you all your duties, as^young Squire while I’m away.” 

His eyes were brilliant, he was unlike his usual self as he 


startling 


E YRE’S A CQUITTAL. 


1 l 


led her to the dining-room, where the young men and lunch 
had long awaited them. 

“ He is handsomer than Doune,” was Gordon’s first 
thought, as the pair came in ; and he understood better that 
infatuation of Mrs. Eyre for her husband, which had hitherto 
seemed to him a fable. 

“ So I have kept you waiting,” said Mr. Eyre, as he sate 
down at .the head of the table, with Madcap on his right; 
“ and yet I am hungry, too : ” and he carved for them all 
with vigor, and even helped himself with a liberal hand. 

“ So you are going away to-morrow, boys,” he said, pres- 
ently. “ Well, I am going, too but farther than you.” 

“ Where are you going, father ? ” said Doune, looking up, 
astonished, while Gordon was wondering what made Madcap 
so pale and unlike herself. 

“ I am going on business connected with your mother, 
and perhaps I may travel with you as far as town.” 

“ And what will Madcap do all alone ? ” said Doune, with 
some dissatisfaction in his voice. “ Couldn’t you put off 
your travels, sir, till I am at home again to take care of my 
sister ? ” 


“ Not I,” said Mr. Eyre. “ I’ve put them off these 
twelve years, and they’ll wait no longer. And the child will 
be happy enough.” He turned to look at her. “ She shall 
be my Squire— a madcap Squire — transact all my business, 
answer my letters ” 

“ Then you expect to be gone some time, sir ? ” inter- 
rupted Doune. 

“ A couple of months, perhaps — or maybe less,” said 
Mr. Eyre. 

“ Then I think, sir, with all respect to you, that Madcap 
should have some one with her during so long, and perhaps 
uncertain an absence as yours promises to be.” 

“ Oh ! there’s Nan,” said Mr. Eyre, carelessly ; “ the 
child couldn’t have a better sheep-dog, and I’ll have no half- 
educated women or people of that sort to spoil her mind and 
manners. And of course she’ll see no company— not even 
young Busby,” he added, with rather a grim flook at Gordon, 
and beneath which the young fellow colored. 

“ So that’s setded,” 5 aid Mr. Eyre ; “ but you boys are 
drinking nothing ” — and he called to the butler to bring up 
some rare old Burgundy* that they were fond of, and when it 
came he would have Madcap drink a little of it too ; but by 
some mischance she spilt the wine on its w^ to her lips, so 


EYRE’S ACQUITTAL . 

that the drops ran down over her white gown like drops of 
blood. 

Mr. Eyre started violently as he saw the trifling occur- 
rence. In that very chair her mother had sat, and he had 
given her a glass of that very same old wine, and she had 
spilled it on her white gown, and afterwards he had remem- 
bered it as an omen of evil, though he had been in such high 
spirits as to be “ fey ” that night. 

“ Why, this is a Quaker’s meeting,” said Mr. Eyre, rous- 
ing himself as the butler softly closed the door, shaking his 
gray head at the signs of mischief he saw in his master. 
“ Madcap, little maid, will you have some sweets,” and he 
half filled her plate as he spoke. But the sweets lay un- 
touched ; and when he looked at her, it was to find her strug- 
gling desperately against tears, her second foolish outburst 
that day. 

“ Why, Madcap,” he said ; then, with a sudden revulsion 
of feeling and all his old tenderness for her, went to her 
side, and put his arms round her. 

“ Dad,” she said, her voice steady, though tears rolled 
down her cheeks, “ Dad — don’t go away ; trouble will come 
of it, and we are all so happy. Don’t go.” 

“ This hot day has upset you,” said Mr. Eyre ; “ but 
you’ll be better by and by,” he added, as Gordon, unable to 
endure the sight of her tears, rose and went to the window. 
“ Come, we’ll fetch your hat and go out : it will be cool 
enough now in the shade,” and he led her out of the room. 

Doune was the first to stir after they left, and frowned as 
he went out : he had long ago mastered his old jealousy, and 
that “ black drop of original sin ” that the angels are said to 
have squeezed out of Mohammed’s heart when he was an in- 
fant, had gradually withered and died in the brother’s breast. 
But he felt that here was something amiss, something that he 
was shut out from, and with a boy’s fierce prejudices regard- 
ing the safety of the women of his family, he blamed his father 
for the carelessness that left the girl unguarded for two 
whole months. 

But for those laurels that he had worked night and day 
to win, that he knew were now within his grasp, he would 
have stayed to watch over her ; and dear as was ambition to 
the ardent brilliant lad, he was within an ace of throwing up 
every thing stay at home and guard his sister. 

He went to his father latdr, and told him this. 

“Whom do you fear i^f’Sgid Mr. £ Eyre, coldly; “the 


E YRE'S A CQ UITTAL. 


73 

servants of his house are all old and tried ; in the village 
there is not one soul that would harm her. And as for 
lovers ” — he paused, “ the idea’s horrible — but mast Jot en- 
tertained one of these days, and of course- she ’ll marry 
Gordon.” 

“ You would not oppose it, sir?” said Doune, drawing a 
deep breath, as on e relieved of intense anxiety. 

“ No,” said Mr. Eyre, with an effort ; “ but not for some 
years — it is like cutting off an arm or a leg, but necessary, I 
suppose, and better fathers than I have lived through 
it.” 

Later in the day came Gordon, who said, without prefix 
of any sort, — 

“ I love your daughter, sir ; when I come home in July, 
may I ask her if she will marry me ? ” 

“ You have not asked her yet — there has been no foolish 
love-making between you ? ” said Mr. Eyre, looking at him 
keenly. 

“ No,” said Gordon, looking down, “ she is so young. . . 
it would be a kind of sacrilege., and yet ” — he raised his head 
boldly — “ I would have asked her this morning if she had 
not laughed at me so, and I saw that as yet she does not 
know what loves means.” 

“ And do you ? ” said Mr. Eyre, seeing his own Mad- 
cap’s lover over again in the young man who stood be- 
fore him. 

“ Did you wait till you were forty before you found out 
what love meant, sir ? *’ said Gordon, steadily. “ To my mind, 
youth is the time in which to love and be happy — -and a man’s 
first love is his purest and best.” 

“ You have never tried a last one,” said Mr. Eyre, care- 
lessly, “ so you can’t tell. But if she must marry (though I see 
no reason for it) she may as well marry you as anybody else. 
I don’t see any rivals ahead,” he added, with a sort of grim- 
ace. “ You see she is so young, and wooers have not yet dis- 
covered what a treasure the Red Hall contains ; but mind 
you, there shall be no engagement till she is sixteen, and no 
marriage till a year or two after that. By the way, all this is 
without her consent, are you sure of it ? To be sure, she cried 
to-day, and perhaps that was for you— though I took her 
tears to myself ” 

“ I can do no more than love her, and tell her so ; the 
rest lies with her,” said Gordon, with true manliness, as he 


E YRE 'S A CQ UITTAL . 


74 

went away, leaving Mi. Eyre to that “ business” which his 
coming had disturbed. 

Although the Sabbath evening, he was deep in those mat- 
ters that a prudent and orderly man sets in order before set- 
ting out for a journey, not in itself dangerous, but from which 
it is possible he may not return. 

On the table before him lay the reply to the telegram 
that a servant had that afternoon ridden ten miles to despatch, 
waiting for the answer,- that came more quickly than was ex- 
pected, and dating from the “ Saucy Poll,” Poplar, an- 
nounced the sailing of the Arizona at daybreak on Tuesday 
morning, a berth being retained for Mr. Eyre, according to 
his telegram just received. 

When the hardest part of his correspondence and work 
was done, Mr. Eyre, catching sight of that open sheet, felt 
a sudden conviction of the uselessness of this voyage, and 
for a moment (common-sense having returned to him, in the 
monotony of his work) wavered in his determination to 

go- 

For what trace, after twelve years, could he hope to find 
of Hester Clarke in that port where she had touched but for 
a few brief hours ? And vengeance could not make her sleep 
the sounder ; and to see the whole terrible story raked up — 
to see himself in his children’s eyes as a thing to break their 
hearts with shame, why surely any sane man might have 
turned his back on the distempered visions of the day, and 
gone out into the summer evening, thanking God for the 
peace that was yet within his keeping ? 

But Mr. Eyre was not then in his right senses ; one of 
those crises of excitement that sometimes at long, sometimes 
at short intervals invariably overtook each male of his race, 
had seized him now, and he must work out whatsoever des- 
tiny he carved to himself in those feverish moments. He 
turned back to his table, his cheque-book, his accounts, and 
instructions to his agent, working at them till far into the 
night, and long after the rest of the household slept. 

At daybreak he rose, and, extinguishing the lights, went 
to his daughter’s room, where he found her fast asleep, with 
tears on her cheeks, that had also fallen on one of the young, 
tender arms that pillowed her head. 

Where had he seen something like this before ? he thought, 
as he stood looking at her, and then he remembered ... it" 
had been at th£ W^ite Lodge, the, late Duke of Marmiton’s 
house, and for his own selfish whim he had kept his wife 


E YRE'S A CQ UITTAL. 


75 


there, and refused her leave to go home to see her children, 
and she had gone to sleep with tears on her cheeks, and 
Dody’s gift of sweetbriar in her hand, and next morning had 
risen early, and upon an ass, escorted by Lord Lovel, had 
set out on the journey that had made the scandal of the 
country. 

Yet Mr. Eyre had no more ruth now than then ; he was 
still “ fey,” a man who must e’en dree out his weird to its 
bitterest conclusion, and upon whom praise and blame were 
alike wasted, unless the reponsive impulse came from 
within. 

By eight o’clock he was in the saddle to ride to the county 
asylum (seven miles distant), and by nine he reached it. 

“ There is no change in her, sir,” said the governor, bow- 
ing low to his superior ; “ she just plays with her diamonds 
from morning till night, but not a word of sense does she 
speak, though we’ve watched her night and day these twelve 
years.” 

“ Perhaps the sight of the woman Clark might rouse her,” 
said Mr. Eyre. “ I’m going to look for her ( though that’s 
between ourselves), though if she is as guilty as I think, my 
journey will be but a wild goose chase.” 

“ For myself, sir,” said the man, with a certain hesitation 
of manner, “ 1 think there’s not a doubt Digges committed 
the murder, egged on by the woman Josephine for the sake 
of the jewels. But in some way Hester Clarke is mixed up 
with it, and the most wonderful thing in maniacs is the way 
they will keep lock and key on some private brain-cell that 
we can’t pick, however cunningly we try ; and that there’s 
some such knowledge she’s watching over, you can tell by 
her very glance.” 

“ Take me to her,” said Mr. Eyre, abruptly, and followed 
his guide into a room where, clean, happy, smiling, Joseph- 
ine Digges advanced to meet them. 

She had grown stout in the midst of the plenty for which 
Mr. Eyre had paid. She was happy in the diamonds that 
sparkled on her round neck and arms, and grasped a bit of 
tissue paper with which she had been rubbing them. But at 
sight of Mr. Eyre a shade passed over her features, and she 
stood still as one on guard. 

“ What did you see Hester do ? ” he said, his eyes fixed 
on hers. “ Did Hester kill her, or did Digges ? ” 

The woman listened attentively, a gleam of reason seem- 
ing to start across her face. 


7 6 


E YRE'S A CQ UJ 7 'TAL. 


“ Hester stole up the ladder,” she said, as one who ac- 
cidentally remembers a forgotten fact ; “ but it was all ovev 
before then — ” and she laughed vac^ptly, and sat down on the 
ground to begin polishing anew at one of her diamond brace- 
lets. 

“ What did she see ? ” said Mr. Eyre, losing his hold on 
her as her gaze wandered away. 

Murder,” said the woman, not looking up, though she • 
shivered. “ But diamonds are beautiful ” — and she kissed 
the stones passionately as the two men left the room. 

“ Have her watched more closely than ever,” said Mr. 
Eyre, as he rode away at a hard gallop to pay one other visit 
before he left home that day. It left him barely time to 
make his final 'home arrangements, and catch the afternoon 
train to town. 

He found Madcap bright and busy, seeing to a hundred 
comforts for himself that he had overlooked ; while the 
“ boys,” as she still called them, came in for a large share 
of her attention. If she packed up a stray tear or two with 
her father’s shirts, Doune’s books, and Gordon’s cricket- 
flannels, who should count them but herself when, brave and 
smiling, yet desolate in the midst of this breaking of her 
household gods, she stood at the door to see the departure 
of all she loved on earth ? 

Her tears had all been got over yesterday ; to-day she 
was used to sorrow, and kissed too, all without a sob, her 
father last of all. 

“ Good-by. Gordon,” she said, and kissed him first, on 
the cheek, with her arms half lifted to his neck. 

“ GoOd-by, Doune,” she said, and kissed him on the lips, 
with her arms about his neck. But to her father she clung 
and kissed his neck only, in an agony of grief that knew no 
consolation. 

Yet her arms released him first; it was her impulse that 
despatched him when, for ever and ever, Mr. Eyre left peace 
and happiness behind him as he drove away from the Red 
Hall. 


E YRE'S A CQ UITTAL . 


77 


CHAPTER III. 

Seven miles of wood may make a kingdom ; and to Madcap 
the glades surrounding her home were a joy, an endless de- 
light, a place in which she might wander as one who stands 
lonely on the seashore, and think out some of those perplex- 
ing questions that will rise in a young girl’s , mind, and that 
not even a mother or a father knows how to answer. 

She sighed, and could have wept, as she stood on the 
other side of the cowslip meadow ; for she felt starved of 
human voices, human company ; missed the strong male in- 
fluence that had hitherto swayed her life ; longed to hear the 
firm step on the stair, to feel once more the all-dominant 
sense of safety that the shelter of Mr. Eyre’s strong arm had 
hitherto afforded her. 

Had he not been a little selfish, she thought, with the 
first shadow of blame she had ever cast on that beloved man; 
might he *not have found some one who could have talked 
with her without, as he said, spoiling her manners and ruin- 
ing her mind ? 

To be sure she had her books, and he had marked her 
out a course of studies that might astonish a fashionable blue ; 
but books were not people ; and Madcap the younger was 
one of those people who love laughter, a joke, innocent fool- 
ing of all kinds, and was such good company that long ago 
the “ boys” had found it far more delightful to them than 
their own. 

Never before had her father and Doune been absent 
together, and then there was Gordon, poor Gordon, always 
overlooked because he was unselfish and never got into rages; 
if only he were living at the Towers at that very moment, 
thought Madcap, as at last she took the plunge into the blaz- 
ing meadow, but was too depressed to run across it as she 
had done only last \yeek. 

Long ago a gate had been fixed in the hedge that con- 
nected the Lovel and Eyre estates ; but the sun was in her 
eyes, and perhaps a tear as well.; but she saw nothing be- 
yond her as she came through the long meadow grass, stoop- 
ing here and there to pluck a faded cowslip, and laying them 
one by one in her basket above the cordial that the butler 


7 8 EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 

had put up for Job, whom she was then on her way to visit. 

Some one who stood on the other side of the gate, and saw 
her still afar off, started back with a low, fierce cry, more of 
fear than pain ; then, as. one blinded, dashed his hands be- 
fore his eyes, trembling as one in mortal fear, for he thought 
that he had suddenly gone mad. 

He did not stir as those silent steps approached him, did 
not look up when, though he heard them not, he knew them 
near. ... So had his lost sweetheart looked and moved, 
so had she carried her basket and plucked a bell-cup here and 
there ; and she had been dead these many years, and. it 
was her phantom that came lightly over the cowslips’ heads, 
perchance remembering that once before she had met him 
thus, and she must meet him once again, in the one cool 
chamber of a madman’s brain ? 

Madcap’s eyes were flooded with the sun, still she saw' 
nothing as she pushed the gate back and ran quickly into 
the wood, and then the sight of him startled her, for he 
seemed almost old, ill, perhaps in trouble, for why was he 
hiding his face thus ? 

“ I beg your pardon,” she said, gently ; and it was the 
voice of his dear sweetheart, and struck to his very .heart ; “ but 
are you ill — in trouble — can I help you ? ” 

He tore his hands away then, and looked at her, touched 
a fold of her dress, a lock of bright hair that lay on her 
shoulder, all as one who wakens from some awful dream, 
then said, as one who struggles still against it,“ they call you 
— they call you . . .” 

“ Madcap,” she said, simply, and seeing some terrible 
story written in the haggard face at which she gazed ; “lam 
called after my mother, Madcap Eyre.” 

“ But she had no daughter,” said the stranger, growing 
paler with each word he spoke. “ She had but two "boys — 
and a little puny infant that died soon after its birth.” 

“ No — I lived,” said the girl, drawing a little nearer to 
him as she saw that he staggered, and seemed about to fall ; 

“ father thought I had died too .... were you a friend of 
father’s ? ” 

But with a groan and sigh he had fallen sideways to the 
ground, and lay with closed eyes, and no movement of any 
kind, so that for the moment she thought he was dead, then 
kneeling beside him, felt for his heart, and knew that he had 
only fainted. 

In the cowslip meadow a brook ran, and the girl sped to 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


79 

it like an arrow, and flew back as swiftly, her straw hat half 
filled with water, no more than the other half having leaked 
out. 

But in her short absence he came to himself, and mut- 
tered, — 

“Fainted for the first time in my life — the old wound re- 
opened, I suppose . . . his child, and she loves him” — 
then swooned away as if at the horror of the thought'. He was 
longer in coming out of that than the first, and the girl grew 
pale as she bathed his brows in vain, then, luckily, thought 
of the cordial, and, lifting his head on one arm, poured 
a quantity down his throat. 

But, worn and old and weary as he looked to her young 
eyes, as one who has suffered much, and with the seam of an 
old sabre cut disfiguring one bronzed cheek, he yet seemed 
to Madcap the goodliest man next to her father that her eyes 
had ever lit on, a man who might be a hero, if the lines of 
his face spoke truth. 

Soon he opened his eyes and looked at her, at the pale 
young face so near his own, felt the trembling of the slender 
arm that supported the weight of his head, and, by a great 
effort, stumbled to his feet, and spoke, — 

“ Pray, forgive me,” he said ; “ I never did such a thing 
before in my life — but I think my old wound must have 
reopened, and I had not tasted anything for twenty-four hours, 

I was in such a haste to get to Job.” 

“To Job?” she said, and started and looked at him 
eagerly, a wild improbable thought darting through her brain, 
then glanced swiftly at his right hand, which was gloved. 
“ Are you Frank ? ” she said, trembling and paling as he 
had seen her mother under strong emotion, “ and you have 
come back to him at last — and just in time ? ” 

“ My Christian name is Frank,” he said, buckling on his 
sword to the stiffest fight — and he had fought many, both 
within and without — into which he had ever plunged. “ I 
was brother officer of Lord Lovel ; we joined about the 
same time, and in the very thick of the fight.” 

“ So you knew him,” she said, looking earnestly at the man 
before her ; “ was he not bright, beautiful — a hero in his life 
as in his death ? ” 

“No hero,” he said ; “ only a man who tried to do his 
duty.” 

“ He died like one,” said Madcap, turning away from 
him, “ and he could do no more . . . but, somehow — somehow 


go EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 

I always clung to a wild forlorn hope that he would come 
back.” 

“ Why did you think that ? ” said the stranger, abruptly. 
“ Was not Frank Lovel buried sound and deep by your 
father ? Do the dead ever rise after twelve years - ' sleep ? ” 

“ Do they not rise again ? ” she said, trembling, she knew 
not why. “ Did you not mistake me just now for my mother, 
while I mistook you for him ” 

“And if they rose,” he said, sadly, “would it be for their 
own happiness or ours ? Would they not quickly wish them- 
selves back whence they had returned ? ” 

“ No,” she said, as she stood before him, slim and tall, in 
her white gown, amidst the dancing shadows ; and he 
wondered if anything on earth could be as lovely as a very 
young, unconscious girl, spoiled by no tricks of coquetry, 
and fearless as a child. “Job and I would have welcomed 
him back, if he had come to us straight from the dead.” 

“ And your father ? ” he said, involuntarily. 

“He never speaks of him now,” she said, sadly; “but 
they were great friends once. Doune remembers when Lord 
Lovel came to the Red Hall every day; and Doune loved 
him, and mother loved him too.” 

“ Do you ever think of her ? ” he said, as he leaned 
against the gate struggling against his weakness. 

“ I think of her .always,” said the girl , 1 softly. “ Now 
that I am growing older I wa?it her . . . but she is happy in 
Heaven ; and she was happy all her life long till she died.” 

He looked at her eagerly. So she knew nothing: — as her 
mother had been saved a knowledge of the truth, so now 
was her daughter ; ay, but for ever ? 

“You are faint and weary,” said Madcap, anxiously; 
“ and I cannot ask you to come to the Red Hall, because 
father forbade my asking any one there in his absence.” 

“ Yes — I know Mr. Eyre is away,” he said, mechanically. 
“ He sailed in the Arizona. Will he be gone long ? ” 

“ About two months, or perhaps longer,” she said ; then 
took his hand, and, leading him to the nearest tree, begged 
of him to be seated at its foot. 

“ You can lean your back to the bole,” she said ; “ and 
here’s the cordial” — she looked the slyest little rogue as 
she popped the basket down beside him. “ You may drink 
it, all, if you like — if it’s not too much for you ; and you’ll 
promise not to stir, not even if I don’t come back for hours ? ” 
Laughter was flying in and out of her eyes, mischief 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


81 


filled her every dimple and danced to the color on her 
cheek ; here was the living image of his sweetheart when 
bent on a frolic, or some bit of fun that she meant to keep 
all to herself for the present. 

He covered his eyes with his hand as though the sun 
oppressed them, though he was in coolest shadow ; but 
when he looked up again she was gone. 


CHAPTER IV. 

“ Saunders,” said Madcap, rushing into the butler’s pan- 
try and nearly upsetting its portly occupant, “ I want a meat 
pasty and bread, and a knife and fork, and a bottle of wine, 
not too heady, because of the cordial, and a dinner-napkin, 
and you’re to give it all to me this minute, or perhaps he’ll 
die ! ” 

“ Yes, Miss Madcap,” said the butler, used to these 
attacks on the larder and cellar, and supposing she was bent 
on one of those deeds of charity that made her the idol of 
the village ; and in less than five minutes she was out of the 
house and flying along the path she had followed so listlessly 
an hour ago. 

What made her so happy ; what had sent her spirits up 
with a bound ? Just the mere delight of having some one to 
speak to, or the happiness of being able to minister to one in 
pain ? 

She had not been gone twenty minutes in all, yet when 
she pushed open the gate, she saw he had either again fainted, 
or fallen asleep. 

She sate down at a little distance, looking at him earnest- 
ly, and in such wise that she learned his face by heart, and 
never forgot it ; so that years after, with no portrait or chance 
resemblance in any other face to remind her of him, she 
could recall each line and feature in it, and perhaps uncon- 
sciously enshrined him in that heart as a hero, and from then 
to her dying day thought of him as Lancelot. 

Presently he opened his eyes and met that lovely, intent 
gaze, springing to his feet like a soldier whom sleep has 
surprised while on guard, then his startled eyes came back to 
Madcap and the food spread out on the grass beside her.. 


82 


E YRE\ S A CQ UJTTAL. 


“ What an ungrateful brute you must think me, ” he said, 
kneeling down on the grass beside her ; “ and you have gone 
all that way in this blazing heat for me, while /have been 
sound asleep — doing nothing. ” 

“ You have rested yourself, ” she said, nodding ; “ and 
that is the best of all. And now for the pasty ! ” and 
she cut a slice and laid it on the plate, for which she had for- 
gotten to ask Saunders. 

“ And here’s the bread ; and, O ! you must sit down — you 

can’t eat on your knees ” 

“ No, ” he said, without stirring ; “ but I can’t eat, and 
don’t ask me why , ” he added, looking wretched as her bright 
face fell, “ for I can’t tell you. ” 

“ Is it because it is father’s bread and wine that you 
won’t touch it ? ” said Madcap, her busy hands fallen to her 
sides, looking like a child ready to cry for disappointment at 

losing a feast ; “ and, besides, you drank the cordial ” 

“ You poured it down my throat,” he said, ruefully ; 
“ but ” 

“ What has father done to you that you should hate him ? ” 
she said, standing up and looking indignantly at him, as he, 
too, rose — “ he who never wronged any one inlife — my dear, 
darling old Dad ! ” 

“ Good God ! ” ejaculated the stranger, not as one who 
spoke blasphemously, but as if the words were wrung out of 
him by a thought of horror. 

. “ And why should I not ? ” she said, looking with wonder 
at his averted face and stamping her little foot with anger ; 
“ is he not the best, kindest, noblest father a child ever had ? 
You cannot know him very well, or you must be a stranger to 
Lovel, since every soul in it knows something of the good- 
ness of Mr. Eyre ! ” 

He drew a deep breath, then said, “ Is he kind to Doune ? 
The boy used to be fond of Frank Lovel.” 

“ How could father be anything else ? ” she said, the an- 
ger of her glance faltering as it fell on the face to which the 
former worn and weary look had come back, “ and of course 
.Doune remembers Lord Lovel — who ever forgot him ? So 

young, so beautiful, so brave ” 

“ I never thought anything of his looks,” said the stranger, 
as one suddenly out of patience at her praises. “ I wish to 
Heaven he could come to life for five minutes, just to show’ 
you what a really commonplace fellow he was — and as for his 
duty, why other men did theirs as well as he did his.” 


E YRE'S A CQ UITTAL. 


H 

“ You are jealous of him,” said Madcap, vexed at this un- 
generousness in the man before her. “ Lancelot would never 
have said such an ungenerous thing as that,” she added to 
herself, sadly. “ All men were, but now that he is dead you 
might forgive him.” 

“I hate all that rubbish about heroes,” he said, still 
cross ; “ now, if this man had lived he would probably be a 
grave, middle-aged man, devoted to his estate, possibly grown 
stout and a little bald.” 

“ He couldn't ,” said Madcap, indignantly. “ O ! I had no 
idea men were so mean about one another ; and if he were 
middle-aged, why you are nearly that, are you not ? ” 

“ And do I seem so old to you ? ” he said, with a curious 
note of pain in his voice, that startled her and almost made 
her forget how keenly he had just disappointed her. 

“ Oh ! no,” she said, shaking her bright head. “ I pre- 
fer grown up people to young ones. Only the other day I 
told Gordon I wished he were not so young ” 

“ Who is Gordon ? ” 

“ Gordon is Lord Lovel.” 

“ He is a good fellow ? ” said the stranger, eagerly. “ You 
like him very much ? ” 

“ Oh ! yes,” she said. “ I love him — next to Doune and 
father.” 

“ And he loves you ? ” 

* Yes — more than he does Doune and father. I think 
(she sighed) ; and that makes him jealous. But he’ll be bet- 
ter when he’s grown up,” she added, sagely. 

He passed his hand before his lips to hide a smile. 

“ But you are only a little schoolgirl yourself,” he said, 
gravely. 

“ I never went to school,” she said, a little proudly. 
“ Father taught me everything — all that I know.” 

Frank shivered, as though suddenly a-cold ; and, being a 
keen observer, she thought of the pasty, and stooped for the 
basket with which she had originally started. 

“ I am going to Job now,” she said; then colors a little, 
as one who suddenly grows shy ; for to succor a stranger 
was one thing, but to take leave of him with a little anger 
was another. 

“ Do not go,” he said gently, “ because — because — it is 
too late.” 

“ He is dead ? ” said Madcap, standing perfectly still, 
and looking at him with eyes in which slowly, slowly rose 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


84 

tears as from crystal wells ; “ and I never wished him good- 
by .. . They did not send to me . . . Did he ask for me ? ” 
she added, as her tears fell on the cowslips under her arm. 
“ Did he talk of his little Master Frank as he went ? ” 

“ He died happy,” said the man beside her ; “ and he 
did not ask for his master, but it must have been of you he 
spoke just before the last, though I thought he rambled, and 
meant your mother.” 

“ And were you such an old friend of his ? ” she said, wist- 
fully, the unwiped-away tears still on her cheeks. “ Did you 
go to him by accident, or because you knew that he was 
ill ? ” 

“*I knew him long ago,” he said, “ I have waited years 
for an opportunity to come and see him” — he spoke slowly, 
haltingly — “ and when I was able, I came. The hall-door 
was open; I went in; a woman was sound asleep behind it ; 
I did not wake her, but looked for Job until I found him. 
He was lying quite conscious, and with his eyes fixed on the 
door,” . . . the stranger’s voice trembled, and he turned 
aside . . . “ and I went in. A woman took me to his room, 
and he died at midnight.” 

“ O ! Job,” said the girl, the girl with one slender arm 
held across her eyes, and the tears falling below to the flowers, 
“ yob . . . my dear old friend, and to wait so long, and then 
to hear almost a stranger’s step sound . . . for of course he 
thought it was Frank. . . Did he say anything when he 
died ? ” 

“ Yes,” said the stranger, slowly, and reluctantly ; “ he 
said ‘ Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for 
' I have seen Thy Salvation.’ ” 

“ Then he took you for Frank,” cried the girl. “ O ! 
thank God for that — that he died happy. Heaven itself must 
have put the thought into your heart to visit him last night. 
I am going to him now,” she added, gently ; “ I shall know 
by one look at his face if he thought he had found his master. 

And when the girl reached him, when she found him lying 
on his white bed, and wearing that last most becoming dress 
a human being ever wears, as his spirit perchance has fairer 
habitation ?iow than it had on earth, Madcap knew that Job’s 
hallucination had lasted to the end, and that death itself had 
proved it, launching him happy on that cold perilous journey 
that, now long, now short, must come to all alike. 

He lay with his face all transfigured with the joy that had 
winged his “ passing,” his lips firm and triumphant as one 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL . 


Ss 

who has sung his Kune Dimittis in the fruition of perfect faith ; 
and Madcap could not grieve for him, as, having gazed awhile 
and kissed his brow, she stole softly away. 

Her heart was sad within her as she went, but no instinct 
said trouble was at hand — that Mr Eyre’s restlessness meant 
mischief ; while as to those doubts of him, she cast them be- 
hind her back, and clung to him all the more closely in spirit 
— her brilliant, good, tender father. 

He had been both parents in one until very lately, when 
she had got a new insight all at once into her mother’s pictured 
face, and had woke — not gradually, but at a bound — to the 
irreparable loss to her, that the mother was. The girl was 
thinking of her now, as she went along the familiar way that 
ended in the cowslip field : would not her mother have taught 
her what to say, and what to leave unsaid, to the first stranger 
who had crossed Madcap the younger’s path, yet who, oddly 
enough, was her friend ? 

She was more used to her father and the boys than to 
women ; though as to young men, she had never conversed 
with but one specimen of the kind, and then very badly, as 
his airs and graces nearly choked her with suppressed mirth. 

She thought that she had been unkind to this weary man, 
whose age might, perhaps, excuse her freedom of speech ; 
but, on the other hand, was she. not wrongingher father by 
any kindness to one who hated him so much that he would 
not touch his bread ? Distance had restored the true propor- 
tion of things to her clear mind ; but, unless with an abnor- 
mal woman (which Heaven forbid !) the heart is apt to step 
in at odd moments and upset the mental universe, so that 
though men have died and run out of their wits for women, 
no woman’s name has ever shone before the world as a great 
thinker, discoverer, poet, painter or writer. 

And to be sure Mr. Eyre had discouraged the study 
of mathemetics in his daughter, ridiculing the idea of Locke, 
that mathemetics made people not so much mathematicians 
as reasonable creatures, and according to his intellectual 
lights (which burned brightly) had made her what her mother 
might have been, had-that mother possessed the daughter’s 
brain. 

For the strong man had found a hundred wants, unsus- 
pected in his wife, supplemented in his daughter, since that 
tougher fibre of himself (despite the outward contrast of their 
looks) had waxed stronger as the years grew, so that on in- 
tellectual grounds they met as happily as on common ones, 


86 


4 YXE'S A CQ UI TTA L. 


and the acute vigor, the keen visions of childhood, often 
shed a new light on the page which Mr. Eyre expounded. 

But strength of character did not hinder Mr. Eyre’s 
daughter from running when she got within sight of the gate, 
and saw the stranger leaning across it fainting again, no 
doubt, and all through his own obsrinacy. 

Lightly as they fell, he heard the girl’s fleet steps approach 
him, but did not turn till a gentle hand touched his arm, and 
an anxious voice said, — 

“ Are you ill ? ” 

Might a man have tears in his eyes yet neither look, nor 
be, unmanly ? Perhaps Madcap got an insight into the real 
beauty of grief when nobly and unshrinkingly borne ; perhaps 
she got a glimpse of the mingled force and unselfishnes of 
this man’s character as he turned towards her, and she learned 
his heart then, at once and forever. 

“ No, I am not ill,” he said ; “ but how long you have 
been — an hour, I should think. I was afraid you had gone 
home through the village.” 

“ O ! no,” she said gently. “ I always go and return by 
way of the cowslip gate.” 

“ Do you call it that ? I shall always think of it by that 
name now ; and no one is allowed to use it but you ? ” 

“ The boys do sometimes,” she said absently ; “ but no 
one else. The villagers are afraid of the woods, for they 
get lost in them, and only a pair of sweethearts wander in 
now and then by chance.” 

“ And no strangers ever trespass here ? ” he said, talking 
for the mere sake of prolonging those precious moments that 
would so soon be over.” 

“ You are the first stranger who has come to Lovel for 
many years,” she said, looking at 'him wistfully; “Martha 
knew you for one directly— she has lived in the parish forty 
years and knows the face of every man, woman, and child in 
it by heart.” 

“Yet I have been in Lovel more than once within the 
last forty years,” he said, absently, and as one whom a thought 
had just struck that he must puzzle out later. 

“ But the most curious thing of all is,” went on the girl, 
“ that Job should have mistaken you for Frank ; for I know 
now that he did ... it is written on his face . . . and I 
bless you for the kind thought of him that brought you to him 
just in time, and made him die so happy.” 

“Yes. he mistook me.” said the stranger ; “ and do you 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


87 

bless me, Madcap ? ” he said, gently, and with such yearning 
tenderness as moved her heart to pity for him ; “ then, if so, 
and since once your mother blessed me, too, I can never be 
truly wretched. And keep your old beautiful belief in Frank ; 
perhaps he deserved it, and your mother loved him, and 
your father loved him, too, once ; and it is something to be 
shrined so beautifully in a young girl's heart.” 

“ Now you are speaking like yourself,” she said, joyously ; 
for to the core of her heart she was human, and loved all 
things, hating to find speck or stain in any ; “ like Lancelot, 
who was proud, you may be sure, of his brother knights.” 

“ And Frank is Lancelot ? ” he said. 

“No you are Lancelot,” she said, looking at him with 
those clear boys’ eyes tnat sometimes shine out of a young 
girl’s face. “ I shall always think of you by that name.” 

“ So you will think of me sometimes, child ? ” he said, a 
gleam of sunshine crossing his sad face. “You will spare a 
thought or two from yonr hero to give to me ? ” 

“Yes” she said, earnestly; “and, somehow, you have 
brought him nearer to me — I know now how soldiers look 
and speak ; I have got a better, more sober idea about him 
now. He will always seem to me ‘ the heart of a lost angel 
in the earth ’ ; but I think that to be a hero one need not be 
young and beautiful, and perhaps find more about me in my 
daily life. And I have so ofte'n thought,” she went on, 
coloring a little as one who fears to preach, “ how much less 
easy we find it to see saints in the human beings around us, 
than to dress up some scarcely seen, unknown creature in 
heroic guise, and placing it in a niche, fall down and worship 
it ? We cry out in wonder at the blindness of the men and 
women of old who stoned their saints and herpes, knowing 
them not, and every day are nob*le deeds done, noble -lives 
drop or are slain in the struggle, and, we bury them.as com- 
mon clay, carve no headstone above them, and the noblest 
heroes, the purest saints are those who in their lifetime 
toiled unnoticed, unrecognized amongst their very nearest 
and dearest, perhaps faintly pitied by them, as well as loved.” 

“ And do you have such beautiful thoughts as these, 
Madcap ? ” said the stranger, who knew, ah, God ! the 
mockery of this pity that we take thankfully from lesser souls. 
“ Are these the things that go on in a young girl’s mind ? 
And your mother had such thoughts — even to her dying day.” 

“Did you know my mother very well ?” said Madcap, 
whose color had waxed brilliant long before her little “ ser- 


88 


ALQUri'lAL. 


mon ” was over, and who felt herself quite undeserving of 
his words. 

“ Very well,” he said slowly. “ She was not always here, 
you know ; she was brought up by Lady Betty Tremayne. 
Is she living still ? ” 

“Yes ; but father never forgave her for being unkind to 
my mother.” 

A look of anger crossed the stranger’s face. Had no one 
else been unkind to that beloved little Madcap, whose living 
image stood before him ? 

The girl saw the shade on his brow ; it was curious how 
quickly she had learned his features and got an insight into 
his thoughts, and she exclaimed, — 

“ Why do you so dislike my father ? Was it because you 
loved Frank so much — for you did love him, didn’t you ? ” 

“ Yes,” he said, looking relieved at the turn her questions 
had taken : “ he and I were friends during the short time we 
were together, and I did think your father was not just to 
Lord Lovel.” 

“ Yet he was three years looking for his old friend,” said 
Madcap, sadly, “ and only came up with him too late ; and 
why should he have taken all that trouble to find him, if he 
had not loved him ? ” 

Ay, the stranger knew. something of the history of those 
three years in which Frank Lovel had been literally hunted 
by Mr. Eyre half round the world and back again, escaping 
him only by a hair’s-breadth in the trenches before Sevas- 
topol. 

Often the two men, the pursuer and the pursued, had 
been in the very same town together, so hotly had Mr. Eyre 
followed on Frank’s tracks. No murderer fleeing for his life 
had been more cunning, no detective more acute than these 
two men, who had been dearest friends but a short time ago. 

“ So you will not answer me,” said Madcap, proudly, 
after a long pause ; “ but do you think you will be any the 
happier for implanting in my heart the first doubt I have 
ever had of my dear father ? ” 

“ Have I done so ? ” he said, turning swiftly, and seeming 
to see in her face the beginning of one of those long, long 
shadows that had missed her mother’s lips, but stilled her 
heart ; “ then God forgive me, Madcap, and take the doubt 
away. Frank Lovel loved him, so did your mother, so do 
you ; the man who can command such love as that, should 
be, must be, above other men.” 


EYEE'S ACQUITTAL. 


89 

“ And if you have had bitter thoughts of him, you re- 
nounce them now,” she said, earnestly. “ You will forgive 
him ? ” ' 

“ He never wronged me,” said Frank ; “ for myself I have 
nothing to forgive — it was for others .... but they are 
dead, and all is over and done with now.” 

Madcap sighed, only half satisfied, then sighed again, as 
she held out her hand to wish him “ good-by.” 

But he did not, could not, take it ; the last moment was 
even more unendurable in its bitterness than he had ex- 
pected, and the strong man’s heart seemed to stand still as 
he looked at her. 

“ Good-by,” she said again ; and then he took the little 
outstretched hand. “ Perhaps you will come back some day, 
and we will be glad to see you, father and I.” .... 

“ I shall never come back,” he said, his eyes hard and 
strained as he looked at her. “ I have seen you for the first, 
last time. . . . And though you have , been kind to me, do 
not wish that I should ever come back ; it would not be for 
your happiness, or that of those you love. I shall never go 
through the cowslip gate — would to God I might ! ” he 
added, with a passion in his voice before which the girl 
trembled. 

“ But when father comes home, you may,” she said, feel- 
ing lifted into a new world as she gazed at him. “ If you 
have quarrelled, he would forgive you, as you have forgiven 
him.” 

“ No,” said the stranger, almost sternly. “ I shall never 
cross it while your father lives. . . . And now, good-by, 
little Madcap, little friend ; ” and he kissed her hand rever- 
ently, as though she had been a young saint, before he 
gently laid it down. 

“ Good-by,” she said, not knowing that tears were in her 
eyes, and so passed through the cowslip gate. . . . Halfway 
through the meadow she turned, and shading her brow, saw 
that he was still there, and made a little gesture to him as of 
farewell . . . but as she turned homewards, knew not that if 
his youth, his hopes of joy, lay forever divided from him by 
the impassable barrier of the cowslip-gate, even for her the 
ivory doors had for ever closed on the unruffled, happy days 
of childhood. 


EYRE’S ACQUITTAL . 


9 0 


CHAPTER V. 

“ Nan,” said Madcap, next morning, “ will you go to the 
cowslip gate, and look inside it ; you will find a meat pasty, 
if the birds have not eaten it, and some other things that I 
forgot yesterday.” 

“ Can’t Saunders go, Miss Madcap ? ” said the woman, 
hardly looking up from her long seam. “ I’ve got a sight of 
needlework to do between this and dinner.” 

“ Yes, there you sit, sewing, sewing, sewing, till I wonder 
you don’t turn into a real machine. And I should like to 
know what it is you are always sitting at, without ever a 
breath of fresh air, except on Sunday, when I drive you to 
church ? If they were shirts or nightcaps for Geordie, I 
could understand your perpetual stitch, stitch ; for you 
know, Nan ” (she shook her head gravely), “you’ve got only 
one idol, and that’s Geordie ; but as they look like things for 
me, why, do you expect me to live to be a Mrs. Methuselah ? ” 

“Young ladies get married sometimes,” said Nan, and 
threaded her needle, then looked round apprehensively, as if 
Mr. Eyre might be in two places at once, “ and it’s as well 
to be beforehand. I’ve kept you speckless from three years 
old, and not a soul but me shall do a stitch of plain linen 
for you as long as you’re Miss Madcap.” 

“ And pray when am I going to be a Mrs. ? ” said Mad- 
cap, who sat cross-legged on the nursery floor, and thought 
that talking to Nan, even, was better than talking to herself. 

“ When you get married, Miss Madcap, to be sure.” 

“ And who am I going to marry ? ” said the girl, in so 
matter of fact a tone that the woman started. 

“Well, there,” said Nan, looking at her young mistress 
with strong disfavor, “ its early days to talk of that yet, but 
if you don’t know, I can’t tell you. To be sure, there’s not 
much choice, but sometimes the finest peach is set a-top of 
the basket, and them’s wise that take it and don’t go farther.” 

“ I never saw any man in the least like a peach,” said 
Madcap, dubiously, “ though to be sure I’ve never met but 
two in all my life — for I suppose Gordon is a young man 
now.” 


EYRE’S ACQUITTAL. 


9 1 

“And hasn’t he got a skin like a peach? ” said Nan, in- 
dignantly. 

“ More shame fer him,” said Madcap, “ peach cheeks are 
for women, not men.” 

“ Well ! ” said 'Nan, laying down her seam in the effort 
to gulp down her wrath, “ and you always talking about the 
last Lord Lovel, Miss, who was as fair as his mother, folks 
say.” 

“ He would *be dark enough now if he had lived,” said 
Madcap, delighted at Nan’s anger ; “ the idea only occurred 
to me quite — quite lately, and perhaps when Gordon is 
older, much older, he will be better looking.” 

“Better looking!” said Nan, to whom this jest was 
deadly earnest. “ when you couldn’t find his match in the 
whole country — why, saving your presence, Miss Madcap, 
Master Doune ain’t a patch on him for beauty, or sweet tem- 
per, or anything else that a young lady might look for in a 
husband, and because he never put himself forward, but bore 
with everybody’s ways, he’s just overlooked, as saints mostly 
is when they come lodging with ordinary folk.” 

“ Always overlooked,” she repeated, “ from the time 
Master Doune began his studies till master took to eddica- 
ting 3'ou, Miss Madcap, but never complaining, always the 
same, and worshipping your very shoestring ; but there, it 
always was the lot of the Lovels to be lorded over and 
wronged by the Eyres.” 

“ Wronged ? ” said Madcap, standing up, and a little 
pale. “What wrong have we Eyres ever done the Lovels ? ” 

The woman shrank into herself, knowing that she had 
transgressed the unwritten law that ruled the house and 
village. 

“ I spoke in anger, Miss Madcap,” she said, rising hum- 
bly, “ and I hope you’ll overlook it . . . but I love Master 
Gordon, and I can’t bear to hear a word against him — or 
even against his kin.” 

Madcap kissed her old friend, and thought with a little 
remorse of Gordon, but presently went away with the faint 
doubts of yesterday strengthened in her mind . . . the anti- 
pathy of Job to her father, as expressed by Martha, and 
confirmed by a hundred signs in the old man that now 
crowded back on her mind, the stranger’s conviction of 
wrong done to Lord Lovel ; lastly, Nan’s words put a new 
light on those past relations that had sometimes puzzled her 
between her father and her hero. 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 




She went straight to her father’s study* as though' to ex- 
ercise those disloyal thoughts ; and when she came to it, and 
saw his chair in the old familiar place, she kneeled down 
beside it and wept, with her head upon the place on which 
his hand had so often rested. 

Here he had taught her ; here from her babyhood she 
had found a sanctuary in all troubles, and his arm ready to 
receive her ; here she had played while he wrote, meeting 
all her demands and interruptions with inexhaustible 
patience ; here she had first essayed “ strokes,” and 

“ Scorned all the fetters 
Of the four and twenty letters ; ” 

though, having once mastered them, she applied the knowl- 
edge rapidly to the books that Mr. Eyre varied, according 
to her understanding from year to year. He would not 
allow her to be one of that noble army of incapables, whose 
lives are the completest conjugation of the imperative mood 
that Lindley Murray ever dreamed of. Bells might be in 
order, and servants legs in order too ; but if she wanted a 
thing, she must fetch it herself, not be forever ringing. 

Against vacillation, too, he warned her : “ If you are in 
doubt as to the propriety of pursuing some especial course, 
waste no time, but decide at once not to pursue ; the mere 
fact that you have doubts about it proves its inexpediency. 
Some women (invariably fools) always decide in the affirma- 
tive.” 

Again he would say : “ Every woman ought to have some 
engrossing duty entirely outside her affections ; for if few 
women have sufficient force of character to deliberately make 
choice of evil, thousands drift into it because they have 
nothing to fall back upon ; ” and he took care that his 
daughter, at least, should not be without that safeguard. 

And now, he who had trained her so purely and thoroughly, 
who had reared her through a delicate childhood to a strong 
and vigorous youth — this dear old dad she thought, as she 
knelt by his chair, was to be doubted by her ; and he absent, 
not able to say a word in his own defence. 

Presently she, got up, dried her eyes, and took down one . 
of the books he had left for her reading; but. for the first 
time that habit of steady application on which Mr. Eyre had 
based her whole education failed her, and she stood for 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 93 

awhile with the lines clear under her eyes but devoid of 
meaning. 

As she replaced the book, the title of the one next to it 
fixed her attention. 

It was an Army Guide for the year after that in which 
Lord Lovel had died ; and trembling a little, as one guilty of 
disobedience, she took it in her hand. 

It opened easily at a particular page, and saved her the 
trouble of search, for Frank Lovel’s regiment was marked 
with red ink ; and though his name did not appear, a cross 
was placed against a name halfway down the list ; the name 
was “ Methuen.” 

The name brought some light to her mind, for more than 
once Mr. Eyre had spoken to her of that curious letter re- 
ceived from the soldier’s mother ; but he had spoken of her 
as a stranger, and yesterday the stranger implied a personal 
knowledge of him, so that there was only perplexity in Mad- 
cap’s thoughts as she put the book back, and moved rest- 
lessly to that second window of the room which looked on 
the wisteria wall, beneath which had been her mothers 
favorite seat. Here she had sate at her needlework or book, 
while Mr. Eyre, happy since she was within sight, sate at his 
table, looking up now and then to that sunny corner which 
held all that made his life worth the living. 

Now his table was set so that his back was turned to that 
deserted spot ; but some deeper glimpse into the inner sad- 
ness of his life came to his daughter as she looked out, and 
thought how in this room he must forever be almost (O ! the 

bitterness of the word !) within touch and call of 

• 

The vanished hand, 

And the sound of a voice that is still. 

The girl moved away. What was this trouble in her mind, 
this unrest, and vague foreboding — she, to whom nerves were 
as much unknown as those fits of depression that often ter- 
rified her in Doune ? It was because she was lonely, out of 
sor ts — anything but the true cause, the casting of the first 
stone at the idol she had set up in her heart and worshipped ; 
while, besides, there might be a wistful thought of the stran- 
ger she had met yesterday, and whom she was never likely 
to see again. 

As she wandered listlessly to and fro, her 


94 


E YRE'S A CQ UITTA L. 


Aimless thoughts, 

Like a babes hand, without intent 
Drawn down a seven-stringed instrument, 

she came to the lofty screen that concealed the private stair 
by which Mr. Eyre, each night and morning, rose and 
descended. 

She had not been in her father’s bedroom since she was 
a child : an impulse of love to him made her visit it now, 
and she was just turning the corner of the screen when a 
voice from the distant doorway startled her, and she turned 
to see Saunders hurrying to her with anxious haste. 

“ Cook’s waiting for orders, Miss Madcap,” he said ; 
“ and there’s a sight of poor folks wanting you in the village — 
whatever keeps you indoors such a lovely day as this, Miss ? ” 
he added, a little fretfully, knowing well enough the dangers 
to which Mr. Eyre’s sudden lawless exit had exposed his 
adored little mistress. 

“ Cook can wait,” she said, “ so can the village folks ” — 
and she disappeared behind the screen. 

The old man stood for a moment without- stirring, then 
shook his head as one who sees bitter trouble ahead. 

“ Bit by bit she’ll find it all out,” he said to himself, 
“ and it’ll break her heart, and it’s right down sinful of mas- 
ter to leave her and all for some fad about the murder, or I’m 
a Dutchman, when it’s clear as a pikestaff that Digges done 
it, with that Jezebel to egg him on. But I’ll just send Nan ” 
— and he hobbled off to find Madcap’s guardian. 

Nan checked a scream as, on hurrying to the room, fol- 
lowed by Saunders, she saw Madcap sitting in the arm-chair, 
lying back with closed eyes. “ Tbfe very image of how her 
mother looked when she was found,” said Saunders in an 
incautiously loud whisper from the doorway. 

“ Who was found ? ” she said, opening her eyes only to 
see the man vanish, then rubbed her eyes and looked at Nan. 
“ The chair is so comfortable,” she said, “ and I couldn’t 
sleep last night — but I was not dozing off when you came in, 
I was thinking about mother — and father — and how he must 
miss her.” 

“ Yes, Miss,” said Nan, who knew every detail of a cer- 
tain night’s wotk by heart, and could not bear to see the girl 
sitting there ; “ but such thoughts aint for a bright day like 
this ; and if you’ll come with me (for I’m vastly afeared of 
them woods), we’ll fetch the things you took out to the beg- 
gar-man — leastways, if there’s any left.” 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


95 


“ No,” said Madcap, jumping up ; “I won’t go to the 
cowslip gate to-day — if you are frightened, take Saunders — 
I’m going to my poor people.” 

“ Anywhere out of here” thought Nan, as she followed 
the girl, and brought her hat and gloves — last of all her 
basket, into which Madcap looked' with a sudden thought; 
then turned it upside down, but nothing fell out. 

“ And I picked such a lot,” she said, absently. “ They 
could not all have tumbled out. Has anybody touched it 
since I came home, yesterday ? ” she added, turning to Nan. 

“ Nobody, Miss,” said Nan, who was a little offended at 
this rejection of the tremendous sacrifice her offer had im- 
plied' ; “ you brought it in on your arm just as it is now, you 
mostly brings it back empty.” 

But it was not empty when she started, ten minutes later, 
for the village, in which tongues were wagging and heads 
nodding to an extent unprecedented within these twelve 
years. 

“ Les absens ont toujours tort ,” and Mr. Eyre was to be no 
exception to the rule. He had been gone barely a week, yet 
already whispers of his errand were abroad ; and now that 
the grasp of the stern hand which had held all his world in 
check was relaxed, he suffered the usual fate at the hands of 
those whose service rested less on love than fear. 

Some of the gossippers saw her coming down the hill ; 
saw how half-way she turned back to look at the gray old 
house that had cradled her so happily, and in which she had: 
never known an hour of sorrow. To her its every aspect was 
beautiful, and the lurid flames that seemed to rise behind it 
as the sun set brought no fear to her mind, though often 
strangers passing through the village would pause and attract 
attention to the seemingly burning house. Madcap could 
not have told the precise point when her first faint doubt, 
dread as death, of her father became confirmed by this visit 
to the village. All welcomed her eagerly, as usual (worship- 
ping the two Madcaps in one), took her generous dole with 
loving thanks, told her. of their joys or woes ; but one thing 
struck her curiously, and it was this : that no one either men- 
tioned, or inquired for, her father. Yet never before had 
lip-service failed him ; perhaps the thought that his shadow 
might cross the threshold immediately after his daughter’s 
prompted those respectful inquiries for him that she had ac- 
cepted, as willing tribute to his goodness. 


9 6 


E YRE'S A CQ UITTAL. 


This silence effected what mere gossip or innuendo could 
not have done, and the crowning sadness was laid upon her 
heavy heart in Synge lai.e where she paused to leave one of 
those little gifts that she brought from time to time. 

The woman who had received Mr. Eyre so curtly, smiled a 
welcome to Madcap and ran out to meet her, though not for 
the sake of her gift, but for herself. 

“ So your father has gone away, Miss ? ” she said, as the 
girl was presently departing ; “ and has he gone to foreign 
parts ? ” 

Madcap glanced at the woman, and found something 
unusual in her : a furtive question, anxiety and dread looking 
out of her eyes, while the rest of the features were sternly 
controlled and gave no sign. 

“ That is Mr. Eyre’s business,” said Madcap, in the first 
unreasonable fit of anger she had ' ever known ; and walked 
out of the house, leaving the mistress of it confounded. 


CHAPTER VI. 

Madcap sat on the top of a new-mown haycock — sat on the 
exact spot that her mother had filled sixteen years ago — and 
surveyed her kingdom through eyes that had been curiously 
strengthened during the past three weeks. For hours she had 
watched the summer seas of grass sink gently to the mowers’ 
scythes, caught a thousand faint vernal scents as they were 
scattered, but wearied at last of the flavor of melitot and 
clover, that out-scented all the rest. 

Then shook her head, and thought how lonely that gor- 
geous queen must have been, for who ever heard of her hus- 
band ; or if a maiden, what did she gadding abroad with 
gifts to the old king, who surely had wives enow? 

Yes, that had been the keystone of Madcap’s comparison 
of the errant quefen to herself, that she must have been in- 
tensely lonely at odd moments in the midst of all her splendor, 
and perhaps palled of her diamonds and rubies, as this girl 
was beginning to do of those simple pleasures that had once 
so entirely satisfied her. 

She had enjoyed an uninterrupted month of her own com- 
pany, and was as sick of it as if it had been the worst in the 


EYfiE'S ACQUITTAL, . 


9 7 

world ; was tired even of her books, and each day and hour 
felt more keenly that hankering after congenial society that 
is the strongest impulse implanted in the human breast. 

O ! for a good rousing bolstering-match with the boys, she 
thought (such events being by no means uncommon, even 
since her lengthened frocks) or a game at snowball, in 
which she was a match for the pair — anything but this dull, 
calm, broken only by the Oxford letters, that held love 
enough, to be sure, but little enough food for though. 

Mathematics and cricket — cricket and mathematics. 
Madcap was interested in neither ; but if both boys could 
have rushed in to-day, and she could have put an arm round 
each neck, she could have listened to them for ever on their 
several pursuits, being so desperately hungry for the sound 
of human voices. She left her haycock, and went towards the 
villagers, who paused in their tossings as she drew near, an- 
swered her eagerly when she asked for a pick, and took a 
turn at labor among them. But more than one head was 
shaken as presently she moved away. 

“ She’s over young to be left the Squire,” said one of the 
women, looking after her ; “ and all the frolic’s gone out of 
her feet since Master went. She ’ll aye fine it main lonesome 
up at t’ Red Hall.” 

“ There’s trouble upon her,” said another woman, sigh- 
ing. “ He's busted out again, and means mischief. And ’ is 
ill work rousing sleeping dogs. He ’d have done better to 
bide at home.” 

“ Seems like yesterday the other young missus were sit- 
ting there” — and the speaker pointed to the distant haycock — 
“ and Master fired over her head at Hester, wlio’d ventured 
to peep over t’ hedge ; and says he to his wife, with his arms 
round her,“ After all, ’tis only a — a rook !’ Just so, as if he’d 
just missed murder. What a man — what a man ! Ay, if he 
never came back it might be best, in the end, for she .* 9 

“ O ! she’ll be happy enough when the young Lord 
takes her home,” said a third and younger voice. “ She’s 
naught to be pitied with so many, as there be to love her — it’s 
just her mother over again, not a soul to be looked at so 
long as the young missus is nigh,” and the young matron tossed 
her handsome head almost as high as she tossed her hay. 

Meanwhile Madcap pursued her way to the meadow she 
had so seldom crossed (since there was no Job beyond) dur- 
ing the past month, and since last she came the hay in it had 
been carried, leaving but close-cropped stubble that smelled to 


9 8 EYRE'S ACQUI7TAL 

her healthily sweet after the overpowering fragrance of the 
“Ten Acre.” 

Half-way across it, she looked towards the cowslip gate. 
Surely some one was standing there ; some one upon whom 
she had mused and thought much during the past weeks, and 
whom she would rejoice to see again ? 

She ran forward quickly, but the sun must have deceived 
her, for when she got to the gate not a soul was within sight, 
and as she stepped into the shadow of the wood, its coolness 
seemed to touch her heart, and she shivered. 

“ Will he never come back ? ” she said aloud ; “ not even 
to look once at Job’s grave ? ” 

As she stood, the nearest tree seemed to move, and a 
man advanced to her side. “ Madcap — little friend,” said a 
well-remembered voice, and in a moment her hand flew to 
his, and she cried out, — 

“ So you have come back — and I am so glad, so very 
glad to see you ! I have recollected a hundred questions that 
I forgot to ask you about Frank ! ” 

He let her hand go, a shade of trouble or disappointment 
flitting across the new brightness of his face, then said, a 
little wearily, — 

“ Yes — we will talk about him presently — but first will 
you not show me some portion of these woods that you know 
by heart ? ” 

“ Yes — I will show you,” she said, joyously, and still a 
little bewildered by her own satisfaction at seeing him, so 
that she forgot his last words to her when they had parted 
at the cowslip gate, and how it was no friend of her father’s 
that she welcomed so eagerly. 

“ I could not show you one tithe of them in a week,” she 
said, as, walking on air, she moved beside him ; “ but I will 
take you first to a haunt of my own, not too far from the 
cowslip gate for me to run to for even ten minutes at a time, 
nor so near that any one can find me if I have a mind to 
hide and she walked on tip-toe, and put up one finger, as she 
brought him soon into a little lovely hollow, where the sylvan 
flowers lingered longest, and whence innumerable glades — 
glades mingling with the broken woodland — made new vistas 
of eternal beauty ; while a natural throne of velvet, at the 
foot of a giant beech commanded all. 

Madcap sprang lightly to her well-loved seat, laid one 
hand on the great moss-covered roots that stretched high 
above the sward, leaned her shoulder to the moss-grown bole 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


99 

at her back, then sprang up, a l would have stepped down 
into the hollow where the strai er stood, but that he came to 
meet her, begging her to stay. 

“ Let us rest here,” he said, eagerly. “ I have travelled 
far to-day, and am very tired.” 

She looked down at him, hesitating, her hand half flutter- 
ing out to meet his lifted one ... no one had ever rested 
in that green chair but she, save, perchance, some flitting 
moonlight thing, or, by day, some saucy squirrel . . . but a 
longer look at him made her sure that he was tired, and 
miserable too ; so that all at once her hand found his, and in 
a moment they were sitting side by side. 

They might have been King and Queen as seen from the 
end of one of those long vistas beyond ; a thousand eyes 
might unsuspected have watched them, a thousand ears have 
hearkened to their talk ; but, you see, Madcap was used to 
sitting there alone, and she loved the many loopholes of her 
outlook, that enabled her to steal away silently at the slightest 
sign or sound of pursuit. The green chair was big ; it might 
have held four Madcaps, though scarcely two Colonel Busbys. 

“ Hark ! ” she said, holding up her finger ; “ do you hear 
that — like the whetting of a saw ? And it is only the tit- 
mouse, and the little impostor has only those two notes with 
which to frighten one ! ” 

“ So you cannot bear to see a tree fall — neither could 
your mother,” he said, looking earnestly at the sylvan land- 
scape. “ Often would she 

‘ Read me a lecture of her country art.' 

Will you not read me one, too ? ” 

“ What can I tell you ? ” she said, looking dreamily out ; 
“ have you not seen it all before — anything that I could tell 
you— but with young eyes ? only I wish you could see these 
woods in spring, when you have to pick your steps so that 
you may not crush a flower.” 

“ And yet,” he said, “you step so lightly; like Ellen — 

‘ E’en the light harebell raised its head 

Elastic from her airy tread.” 

“ Oh, no ! ” she said. “ That is a poetic conceit ; and, 
besides, she would have stopped to pick some . . . and when 
I have filled my lap, somehow I feel as if I had been taking 
lives, they grow so tall and straight and happy, and open 


IOO 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


their eyes much as w'e do ; d they are set just where is 
best for them, and last so n ly happy days in shine and 
shade — it seems just a selfisl vhim to put them in water for 
a day or two, then throw them away for new favorites.” 

“ So she is faithful,” thought the stranger ; “ and so was 
her mother — with one exception.” 

“ Boys don’t understand these things as girls do,” she 
said, sighing. “ Doune is always in the classics, and Gordon 
doesn’t know a bluebell from a hyacinth, and loves his boat- 
ing and cricket ; he would bowl just as hard o^er cowslips’ 
heads as over a shaved meadow ; and I can almost fancy him 
settling down as you said Frank would, and getting a little 
bald and istout. Poor Geordie ! ” 

But her heart reproached her as she said the words ; and 
she looked up quickly at the stranger. 

“ Don’t think that I am blaming him,” she said, “ I love 
him dearly ; it is because he is so good that we have all over- 
looked him. But I’ll try and be better to him before he 
comes home to setde down for good ! ” 

“ When will that be ? ” said the stranger. 

“ O ! a good long while yet,” she said, gravely. “ He 
wants to come home, but I said he must stay longer at Ox- 
ford to take care of Doune.” r 

“ Does Doune want especial taking care of ? ” 

“ He is a genius,” said Madcap, proudly, but w-ith a 
happy smile on her lips, “ and, of course, he has no common- 
sense ; but Gordon has plenty. So while I am not taking 
care of Doune, Gordon must.” 

“ Poor Gordon, indeed ! ” said the stranger under his 
breath ; “ the Lovel fate over again.” 

“ Did you speak ?” she said, lookii^g at him as if to seek 
a reason for the unaccountable delight his grave companion- 
ship gave her. 

“ I am waiting for that lecture,” he said, with the “blink ” 
of sunshine that she remembered crossing his lips. 

“ How long shall it be ? ” she said, falling into his humor, 
and wishing that her talk might soothe him to peace, for 
there were deeper lines of suffering on his face to-day than 
there had been a month ago. 

“ Half an hour — an hour,” he said, “ for I am not likely 
ever to sit here by your side again. I was in Lovel to-day 
on Job’s business, little friend, but I could not keep away 
from the cowslip gate, and, by good luck, you came.” 

“ O ! you will come back again some day,” she said, gen- 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL, 


IOI 


tly ; and you will go through it.” She shrank a little, as one 
who unwittingly touches fire, as he looked away from her ; 
his face suddenly grown stern, but yet more weary than be- 
fore. 

Madcap had only a child’s heart, strong and true (though 
she looked a woman), and she was used to Doune’s dark 
hours, and longed to solace this one ; but, before she could 
summon up courage to speak, he had turned to her, and for 
the third time demanded his “ lecture.” 

“ To begin with, then,” said Madcap, on that instant, 
“ both you and I are sitting in the embrace of a court beauty, 
who wears a velvet suit, slippers herself yet more delicately 
in moss, while her waistcoat is always of silver, even when in 
autumn she glows in pure russet-gold. The Lady Chestnut 
may get the better of her in the matter of blopm, but her out- 
lines are clumsy; and over-ride, beside, that delicate beauty ; 
and even the oaks cannot hold their own before her. . . . 
The stock-doves are all her lovers ; you will see them follow 
even a distant rustle of her petticoats for a mile through the 
woods. . . . They follow no other so, for birds have finer 
taste than human beings — though they are their echoes, and 
caricature all their absurdities. Have you ever watched 
them ? ” she went on, quickly, content to talk so long as she 
could charm the sadness from his face. 

“ I have listened to them,” he said ; “ somehow I have 
never thought of birds except as singing or hungry.” 

“ There is a life between the two,” she said, looking down 
her beloved glades, and speaking softly to herself. There 
is marrying, building, rearing the young family. . . . Have 
you ever seen a house-martin feed her young ? ” she said, a 
smile breaking through her thoughts as she looked at him. 
“ First by some miracle she sets them all in a row on the top 
bar of some secluded gate. Then she forages, and skims 
back to feed each little one flying, and it is miraculous how 
cleverly and neatly the business is done on both sides, a pat- 
tern to our village mothers if only they would take heed of 
it ! And nearly all the birds are good parents ; owls come 
back once in five minutes to look at their young, wrens once 
in two, swallows every second or third minute, and some of 
the others even oftener than that.” 

The stranger looked at Madcap keenly. Yes, here was 
the true mother’s instinct beating in her young breast, the 
one crowning, womanly charm without which a woman is less 
flower than weed. 


102 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL . 


“ But they are not all good,” she added, gravely ; “ a 
raven deserts her young as soon as hatched, and none have 
ever been able to find out how it is fed — by dew ? or worms 
bred in the nest ? And some, O ? but some of them have 
tempers ! The whitethroat will pop his head up over the 
hedge and make faces at you, if he thinks you are near his 
nest, flirt his tail, and be positively insulting in his manner; 
and, nightingales, if you happen to meet them when taking 
their young out for a first walk, will pursue you along the 
hedge as you walk, snapping defiantly in your ears, and tell- 
ing you as plainly as possible to get home . . . and there 
are rogues — the hen harriers who beat the fields of corn reg- 
ularly like pointers or setter dogs . . . the ravens, who 
spend all their spare time in cuffing each other on the wing, 
frowned, on by the solemn crows who fly in pairs all the year 
round, and look upon Valentine’s Day as a frivolous busi- 
ness. O ! there is something to laugh at or admire in every- 
one, and they are so absurdly like human beings ! ” 

“ Have you found one who resembles me ? ” said the 
stranger, long ago roused out of his thoughts, and turned 
sideways in his moss-grown elbow-chair to look at her. 

“ Perhaps,” she said, a little sadly, “for long ago I found 
one for Doune, the gold-crested wren, who will not mingle 
with crowds* but holds aloof in fields and woods, and statves 
because he can suffer, but cannot brook pity. . . . Then 
there is the crow,” she said, in a brighter tone, “ who swag- 
gers in his walk, and is Colonel Busby’s double ; and the 
daw is Mr. Busby, with only half his walk (he would never 
permit more) ; and the magpies and jays, who beat the air 
with their wings, yet make no despatch, are like ” 

“ Me ? ” he said, “for I have practically stood still these 
twelve years ” 

“ Foolish persons with weak wills,” said the young lec- 
turer, frowning ; for by now she had got into the swing of 
her own voice, and sincerely loved its sound. 

“ And a blue titmouse,” she continued, “ perched on the 
head of a sunflower, devouring its seeds, is like one of those 
frivolous young maids who marry only to devour their hus- 
band’s substance, while a greenfinch who goes a-wooing puts 
on all the languishing, die-away airs and gestures of a village 
beauty, who sighs in vain for some rustic jock. And the 
swifts who dash round in circles are the ne’er-do-weels who 
never advance ; the larks and wagtails, who walk so daintily, 
moving one foot before another as we do ourselves, are the 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


i°3 


bright, brisk house-mothers, whose cottages are all in order, 
and who are smart even for their husbands.” 

“ Is that so very uncommon ?” said the lecturer’s only 
pupil. 

“ Very. Then a rook when he goes a-courting will try and 
sing but only makes a harsh and horrible noise that splits 
your ears ; and a crow will make himself ridiculous in the 

same way, and they always make me think of ” 

“ Middle-aged men wooing young maids ? ” 

“ To be sure ! ” said Madcap, “ as sometimes happens in 
our village ; but father always interferes, and puts a stop to 
any of those unequal matches. And the peacock is the fine 
lady whose worth is all upon her back, so that none was left 
over for her voice or body. ... I have seen just such a lady ! 
Then the skylark always seems to me like some gallant pure 
soul hampered by a weak body, for soar as he may, and does 
perpetually, he sinks more swiftly than he can rise ; and the 
meteor-like flash of the goatsucker always seems to me like 
the flight of a beautiful thought, as the lightning flash of the 
kingfisher, like an inspiration that comes into a human soul, 
it know not whence ! and a starling should belong to the sea, 
for he swims in the air- — but there are so many,” she added, 
stopping short in her lecture, “ I should bore you to death if 
I told you one-half of them ! ” 

“ So we all have our doppel gangers among the birds,” he 
said. “ Well — I have found one for you — you are a swallow, 
for your walk is like the flight of one, but your voice is like 
the blackcap’s, and I am beginning to suspect you of possess- 
ing the owl’s wisdom ” 

“ ‘ Silly swallow, prating thing,’ ” quoted Madcap, laughing: 
“ yes, that suits me very well. But I do not like the owl — he 
is my only enemy in all the wood. He can scream, snore, 
scold, and hiss like a thousand snakes, all in less than a 
minute ; but I love the deep and solemn note he sometimes 
uses, and that makes the forest re-echo for miles ! ” 

“ But surely you never come here at night alone ? ” he 
said, thoroughly startled. 

“ O ! yes, often,” she said ; “ if I cannot sleep or anything 
has vexed me, and by moonlight it is far more exquisite than 
by day. . . Have you ever studied the moonlight flowers ? ” 
she went on, looking at him wistfully; “they are all so pale, 
so weird, as if the moon had looked into all their pretty faces 
one by one and made them sacred and still like herself . . . 


io4 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


their very scent is faint and ghostly as in a dream. ... 
Sometime I find a rabbit sitting up on my chair and washing 
his face; sometimes as I sit quite still, one or another of the 
night animals run across my knee, and I get all sorts of 
queer peeps into the creatures’ habits, for it is in the night 
only that the smallest forest animals live?' 

“ It is not right for a young thing like you to be wander- 
ing here alone at night,” said the stranger, frowning. “ Did 
he leave no one to take care of you ? ” he added, thinking 
that Mr. Eyre’s confidence in her, read very like neglect. 

“ O ! yes,” she said, laughing ; “ there is Nan — but she is 
terrified of these woods even by day, and no earthly powers 
would draw her here after nightfall ! ” 

“ And you say no one at home knows of this haunt of 
yours,” he went on, in a dissatisfied tone. “ Supposing you 
fell ill here — or were robbed and murdered by some stran- 
ger or footpad ? ” 

“ I wear no ornaments,” she said, “ and strangers and 
footpads never come here.” 

“ Am not I a stranger ? ” he said, looking at her keenly. 

“ No,” she said, stoutly; “you were mother’s friend and 
Job’s — and Frank’s, and you will tell me all about yourself, 
some day — for I must be going back to my hay now.” 

“ Yes,” he said, looking at her eagerly, yearningly, as a 
man may at something he knows to be forbidden to him, but 
that soon will have passed beyond the reach of his power to 
behold it, yet the present was his , he would beat out his little 
span of joy to its utmost limit. . . Had he by hard longing 
(for surely intense wishing had brought her) summoned her 
footsteps to the cowslip gate, only to let her go so quickly ? 

“ Let us make a bargain,” he said ; “ give me another 
lecture — just a little one — and I’ll tell you all about Frank — 
and myself. The hay will do well enough without you. 
Tell me something of the daylight life, of these woods, and 
how you spend your hours in them.” 

“ How can I tell you ? ” said the girl. “ Men don’t un- 
derstand these things— even father does not ; and you would 
think I was idling away my time when I am learning some- 
thing new at every step. Any one could learn the avenues 
in a day, but half a dozen miles of broken woodland are 
another matter, and there are such beautiful things outside 
the wood — in our own grounds, in the meadows, every- 
where.” 

“ Tell me of some of them,” he pleaded, happy only so 


E YRE'S A CQ UIT7AL 


I0 5 

long as her young voice ran on. “I am going to settle 
down in the country myself before very long, and I expected 
to be dull ; but your knowledge will help me.” 

“ What can I tell you,” she said, “ if you have not lived 
among such things ? If you have never been caught in a 
thicket of blossomed thorn ; never followed the plough and 
smelled the sweet, fresh earth ; never watched a daisy hang all 
its petals downwards at sunset, or a poppy fold its heart into a 
red cup at eve . . . never marked the little snowy half-closed 
unbrellas made by the wind-flowers, or seen the light glisten- 
ing at sunset on a field of spiders’ webs, aerial bridges tossed 
from blade to blade of grass, and stronger than any made by 
human hands, since the heaviest footfall will not break 
them ? ” 

“ No,” he said, as she paused, and he saw that she had 
forgotten him in her thoughts ; “I have seen none of these 
things ; but I will look for them all some day.” 

“ There is always some new delight,” she went on, softly, 
as if to herself ; “ some lovely accident, a§ we think, but set 
there to help us to — 

Live more hearty as we pray. 

One day it may be a sunset to startle one into a real under- 
standing of heaven . . . another it will be a sheet of 
emerald grass shining through a row of tall poplars just bud- 
ding into brown ... or it will be a carpet of blue anemones 
in January, when no other flower is abroad or seen, a field of 
tares and wheat sway to the breeze, scarlet in one light, gold 
in another ... if you have never lost yourself in the sweet- 
ness of a bunch of clove pinks, and yet can catch the fra- 
grance of a chequered fritillary — never seen a glow-worm 
crawl up a stalk of grass and hoist up her little lamp as signal 
to her mate ” 

She paused, and burst out laughing at herself. 

“ O ! what nonsense I am talking,” she said. “ As if a 
soldier could be expected to know or care anything of .such 
matters. But it has been a great relief to me to say it, all 
the same,” she added, nodding ; “ and I am very much 
obliged to you, indeed, for listening to me.” 

“ I shall remember it all,” he said ; and thought how he 
need not fear for her, since she had real religion— the religion 
of a beautiful fearless life, that beat in entire harmony with 
the works of her Creator. “ Have you ever tried to write 


IC 6 EYRE r S ACQUITTAL. 

down your thoughts ? Your father was a celebrated writer 
in his youth.” 

“ No,” she said, slowly, “ I have never tried ; and think I 
never shall. But if I had tried to write, do you know how it 
would have ended ? I should have gone on trying all my life ; 
and when I had become quite old, I should have called my 
friends together and asked them to hear the fruits of my 
labors. They would all cry out, ‘ But it is centuries old ! ’ 
And I would say, ‘ Yes, it is the last chapter of the Book of 
Ecclesiastes ; but it has my soul, my best efforts, in it ; and 
I have no better.' ” 

“ You have chosen a sad form of expression, child,” he 
said, struck by the solemn stillness of her voice and look. 

“ Are not the young sad ? ” she said. “ Or why does one’s 
heart ache in spring, when older people cannot tell it from 
early summer ? I think it must be because our suffering is 
before us ; theirs is behind them.” 

“ Why must you suffer ? ” he said, his heart sinking as he 
looked at her. “ Qod forbid that you should ” 

“ Why should I not ? ” she said, looking at him gravely. 
“ It is the lot of all ; and the happiest, the best beloved are 
always those who suffer most.” 

“ Where did you learn all this ? ” he said, hardly knowing 
whether to be glad or sorry that the young eyes looking out 
on life were so clear. 

“ Perhaps out of my own heart,” she said ; “ perhaps out 
of the village ; perhaps out of my Book of Ecclesiastes. And 
that is why I think my mother’s lot needs no grieving over. 
She went away in the full tide of her happiness. It is for 
ourselves we may grieve, not her. And you say you knew her 
very well,” she went on, gently ; “but it must have been be- 
fore she married father, for he did not seem to know your 
name when your mother wrote to him.” 

Had the afternoon grown suddedly colder ? The shiver- 
ing note of a willow-wren filled up the moment of silence 
before he turned to her and said, — 

“ So you have known my name all along ? ” 

“ I think you must be Major Methuen,” she said, and 
wondered to see how haggard he had gone all at once, for 
during the past hour he had seemed to grow younger ; “ and 
I am glad you have come home to your mother,” she added, 
softly, “for she said you were her only son, and she a 
Widow.” 

“ Yes, she is happy now,” he said, as one whose thoughts 


E YRE'S A CQ UITTAL. 


m 

were not in his word's ; “ we are going to settle down to- 
gether in the country next month. I was always a bad cor- 
respondent, and she thought ” 

“That you must be dead,” said Madcap, sighing; “But 
it was poor Frank who died.” 

“ What on earth is the link between him and me ? ” said 
the soldier, a flush of something that looked like anger rising 
to his tanned brow. “ Everywhere I am received for him, 
taken for a dull echo of him — a makeshift that bears some 
faded resemblance to the dead hero. I am positively sick 
of hearing myself called Lovel, and being clapped on the 
shoulder every time I venture to go to my club by some man 
who vows he used to know me in another name.” 

“ But was there any resemblance between you ? ” said 
Madcap, sitting erect, and understanding Job’s mistake 
better. 

“ There was the likeness that may exist between two fair 
men of exactly the same height and build,” he said carelessly, 
“ though I never saw it myself. Men dropped like flies in 
those days, and looked less at each otheVs faces than at the 
enemy ; but our supposed resemblance was a matter of com- 
mon remark in the regiment. Then the circumstances of 
our joining were almost identical ; both had sold out of the 
Guards, both had applied for leave of Service in the war at 
the same time, and both for the same reason (though only 
they two knew it) — a bad heartache of some years’ standing. 
So for. the short time we fought together we were friends, and 
when one died the other must needs be received as his own 
ghost. It was the commonplace order of our looks that did 
it, I suppose,” said Major Methuen, still with that angry 
flush on his brow; “but how men in their .senses can pre- 
tend to recognize in middle age one out of a pair of yellow- 
haired boys, I can’t imagine. There never was an uncom- 
mon line in either of our faces ; there are hundreds like us 
to be met with in the streets any day.” 

“ Are there ? ” said Madcap, a little coldly at this under- 
rating of Frank. “ I have always heard very differently . . . 
but I see that you never really liked him or knew how to 
value him.” 

“Did I not?” he said, with a queer smile; “yet we 
were friends enough to have no secrets from each other (save 
one, and that concerned a woman), and, on the eve of battle 
we exchanged ” he paused abruptly, and said no more. 

“ Frank was not a lad when he died,” said Madcap ; “ he 


1 0 8 E YES'S A CQ UIT TAL. 

was nearly twenty-seven — six years older than Gordon. Per- 
haps you were older — though you need not be so very glad of 
that now,” she added, looking round at him with a little fem- 
inine touch of spite that even an angel will indulge in if you 
disparage her patron saint. 

But he only smiled, and she laughed, so that peace was 
restored between them, though her next question endangered 
it. 

“ Pray,” said she, “ were both your heartaches for one and 
the same person ? ” 

She was looking at him earnestly, as though by his reply 
she might find the key to an enigma that puzzled her. 

“ Why do you ask that ? ” he said, his eyes steady, though 
his color changed. 

“ Because Job told me once that Frank loved my mother,” 
she said, resting her cheek on one hand and looking at him 
thoughtfully ; “ but she loved father best — and, of course, 
she married him. Did you love her, too ; and is that why 
you speak of her so tenderly, and love me ? ” 

“ So you know I love you, child,” he said, turning to her, 
swiftly. “ God bless you for saying that — yes, I did love her ; 
and I lost her only to find her once more — and once more — 
to lose her.” 

“ No, not lost,” she said. “ I will love you for my 
mother’s sake and my own . . . and you will forgive father ; 
if he wronged you it was unwittingly ” 

But he had started up, she sate alone on her green throne, 
and he was standing below in the green hollow gazing straight, 
before him, as though through the glade he saw some fear- 
some thing approach. 

“ Good-by, little one — little child,” he said, turning to her 
suddenly, as she stood half-longing, half-fearing to descend, 
and she saw in his eyes the look, the tears that she had sur- 
prised in them once before ; “ only one thing could ever 
bring me back, your being in trouble, which, please God, you 
never will be.” 

. “ Good-by,” she said, gently, asking no questions, as some 
children and women will, God knows, and vex a man’s soul 
even while he loves them, but when he reached up and took 
her slender hand, she laid her other over it, and held it fast. 

For a moment the strong man bowed his head on them, 
“ If I might stay,” she thought she heard him say ; but in 
another moment, and with no further leavetaking, she was 
standing alone above the hollow, and she could not see which 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


109 

way he went for tears . . . and then (for her child’s heart 
had gone out to him) she sate down and cried, — cried, not 
knowing it, for the peace that had fled away with him for 
ever, but should come back to her, perchance, in other guise, 
bringing with it better gifts than those ignorant ones over 
which she so passionately wept. 


CHAPTER VII. 

One late June morning ill-news came riding full gallop 
to the Red Hall, and Colonel Busby was the Mercury that 
bore it. 

His horse’s heels struck out sparks of news as he flew, so 
that everybody had the news before he reached the Red Hall, 
and was so bursting with importance when he reached it, that 
Saunders was sure something was amiss, and admitted him 
at once. 

“ Find your young mistress immediately,” he said, puffing 
himself out like a frog, as, uninvited, he marched with stately 
step into the dining-room. 

“ My mistress is out, sir,” said the man, using the for- 
mula Mr. Eyre had directed him to use to all callers in his 
absence, though in this instance he spoke truth, and added, 
“ she has probably gone to the woods.” 

“ Out ! ” said Colonel Busby, bouncing, as he stood. 
“ Out on such an occasion as this ? She must be found, and 
found immediately.” 

“ You bring no bad news, sir, I hope,” said the butler, 
pausing at the door. 

“ Well, well,” said Colonel Busby, “ you’ll hear presently. 
Your mistress must be told first, and not in a sudden way. 
I shall, of course, break it to her gently, — gently. I am used 
to these things, you know.” 

“Very true, sir,” said Saunders, dryly, as he departed; 
for who ever knew Colonel Busby to be above five min- 
utes late for any disaster within a radius of ten miles ? 

He flattered himself he was in at the death now, as he 
walked up and down the room, growing more and more im- 
patient as the minutes went by, and still Madcap did not 
come. Why, good heavens ! she might be told of it in the vil- 


110 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


lage, and here was he, cooling his heels, when he had half the 
county to ride round that morning with his news. 

When the half hour struck, he could contain himself no 
longer, but rang the bell ; and when Saunders appeared, said, 
abruptly, “Mr. Eyre is dead.” 

The man started back, with a cry of horror. 

“ Yes, here it is,” said Colonel Busby, struggling to pull 
a pink paper out of his pocket. “ I have it posted for me 
from town every afternoon, so that I am always half a day 
ahead of everybody else with my news. See here,” and he 
unfurled the paper with a flourish, and pointed a fat trembling 
forefinger at certain capital letters — “ BURNING OF THE 
SAILING-SHIP ‘ ARIZONA’ ; all hands lost, and one pas- 
senger — Doune Hamilton Eyre.” 

The old butler thought of Madcap, as he covered his eyes 
with two trembling hands, blaming himself for a curious feel- 
ing of something very like relief. 

“ Yes, he’s dead,” said Colonel Busby, cheerfully, “ and 
just as one might expect — quite in his usual way. I mean, as 
he did things in life, involving all around him in disaster, and 
disappearing, like a sort of middle-aged Casabianca, in the 
flames that lit the burning deck, etc, for he must pose — if 
only to the elements.” 

“ My master will be deeply regretted, sir,” said the but- 
ler; “he was greatly respected by all, and much loved by his 
family.” 

“ Ah, yes, — to be sure,” said Colonel Busby, drawing in 
his horns ; “ you see it is owing to his being so well known 
that we have got the intelligence so quickly ; plenty of sailing- 
ships are burnt or lost, but they don’t get capital letters in 
the newspapers.” 

“ My master may have left the ship,” said Saunders, 
thoughtfully, “ Until we receive further particulars, sir, I 
think it will be better not to say anything to Miss Madcap. 
No doubt Mr. Doune has seen the paper by now, and will be 
here before evening.” 

“ I hope it is a mistake,” said Colonel Busby, sobbing as 
he folded up his paper, and feeling that it would be the un- 
kindest cut of all from his old enemy, did that enemy return 
to prove his information incorrect. “ Well, good-day ; I sup- 
pose your mistress will be found in the course of the morn- 
ing, — very improper, — very improper, her wandering about at 
all hours by herself indeed, and in those miles of woods, too, 


E YRE'S A CQ UITTAL. T T Y 

highly irregular,” — and he fussed himself on to his horse and 
out of sight. 

“ I must go and find her,” said the old man, aloud, as he 
re-entered the house ; “ so long as she’s not gone on to the vil- 
lage, there’s none to tell her ; but ’tis like looking for a nee- 
dle in a bundle of hay,” he muttered, a 5 he went to caution 
the other servants against saying anything to her if she soon 
came in. 

They had already got the news from the village, and some 
wept, and some trembled; one did not believe it, another 
did ; but all agreed they had felt trouble in the air ever since 
Master had “ broken out ” in May. 

“ They said he was dead once before,” said Nan, who 
heard the news last, “ and he came back safe and sound, and 
so he will now — though pr’aps sorrow’ll soften Miss Madcap’s 
heart a bit to Master Gordon,” she added to herself, hope- 
fully. 

The old butler never walked so far under good green 
wood as he walked that morning ; but not a flutter of his 
young mistress’s gown did he catch sight of,' not a trace of 
her could he find, and, having lost himself four or five times, 
was thankful to reach the village, which he found in a state 
of extraordinary excitement and gossip. 

The daily papers had arrived, and confirmed Colonel 
Busby’s news, and no one seemed to doubt the truth of it, 
though this second report of Mr. Eyre’s death was very differ- 
ently received to that former one which twelve years ago had 
convulsed the village. 

To-day all tongues spoke kindly, if they did not bitterly 
deplore him — if to the last he remained a man only truly lov- 
able to his immediate home circle, he had at least won the 
respect of these poor people by his faithful care of his chil- 
dren. Many of the villagers remembered how harshly they 
had thought and spoken of him lately, yet under all their 
words and thoughts ran the underlying current that perhaps 
it was best for her that it should be thus, for now there would 
be no raking up of the old wretched story of sin and shame, 
no continuance of that pursuit on which he had departed ; but 
all shortcomings, all wrong-doings for ever rounded off in a 
death that perchance had in it elements of grandeur. 

So, in some under way, his people talked of him that 
morning until Saunders appeared in their midst, and then they 
rushed to him, asking how the young mistress “ took it.” 

“ Miss Madcap doesn’t know it,” s’aid Saunders, with dig- 


1 12 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


nity. “ No more do I — you’d best all wait a bit before put- 
ting on a bit of mourning. Master’s as likely as not to walk 
in this very night. Who’s to say where he got out, or that he 
ever meant to go all the voyage of the Arizona ? ” 

And he disappeared up the hill that led to Mr. Eyre’s 
house, leaving his listeners plunged in a cold bath of aston- 
ishment. 

“ To be sure, old Busby’s facts is .mostly his,” said a vil- 
lager, scratching his head ; “ and ’twas -he as said master was 
dead once afore — m’appen ’twill be best to stick to our wark 
in case he comes home promiskis, and catches us a napping ” 
— and the speaker shouldered his spade and departed on the 
spot to put his own suggestion into practice. 

Gradually the little crowd dispersed, but only to gather 
again as a stranger came quickly through, tall, bronzed, and 
bearded, looking rieither to right nor left as he, too, climbed 
the approach to the Red Hall. 

“ It’s true, then,” said one of the women, looking after 
him ; “ and he’s come to break it to her — maybe some friend of 
her mother’s family. He’s a bit like the old Lord Lovel, 
though, to be sure, he died afore he was forty.” 

“ M’appen ’tis the young Lord Lovel ’ud comfort her 
best,” said another. “ There’s no cure for tears like a sweet- 
heart’s arm round your waist ; but he’ll be here by sundown, 
no doubt.” 

The stranger passed Saunders on the way, so that a 
woman opened the door to him, and to his inquiry for her 
mistress, merely said she was “ out.” To his inquiry whether 
any bad news had been received at the Red Hall that morn- 
ing, the girl said “ Yes ” but added that the young mistress 
did not know of it, as she had already gone out when Colonel 
Busby called. 

“ Prating fool,” muttered the visitor-, below his breath, as 
he turned and went through the grounds straight to the mea- 
dow, beyond which was the cowslip gate he had told Madcap 
he must never cross. 

But he went through it now without a thought, and pushed 
swiftly on ; that curious local memory which we form under 
moments of strong excitement guiding him as he went 
forward, so that he scarcely missed a yard of the way he had 
gone with Madcap a fortnight ago, and soon had reached a 
point where he saw her in dim perspective, sitting in her 
green chair, with one elbow on its arm and one hand sup- 
porting her cheek. 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL . LI ^ 

He could not at that distance see if she looked glad or 
sorry, but the attitude seemed to speak of dejection, and a 
closed book lay on her knee ; and as he drew nearer he saw 
that she was pale, the corners of her mouth drooping sorrow- 
fully, as if her thoughts were sadder than her loneliness. 
He stopped short, suddenly struck by the thought of how lone- 
ly she must have been during the past week ; but her father 
had been right— she was strong enough to be left to herself ; 
and as Doune had been his mother’s child through afid 
through, as this girl had Mr. Eyre’s fibre of strength in her, 
and would rally from a blow that would have slain her 
mother. 

She looked up as he approached, and started to her feet, 
and then he saw how pale she was before the joyous color 
rushed into her cheeks, then out again, leaving them paler 
than before. 

“ I am not in trouble,” she said, looking down at him as 
he stood in the little hollow below. “ Did you think I was ; 
or have you brought me bad news ? ” 

He could not play with the agony of question in her 
eyes. 

“ Yes,” he said, though in his heart he knew it was good^ 
that for the dead and the living his news was best. “ it is of 
your father ... he is dead.” 

Dead ! ” she said, standing straight up, and gazing over 
his head. “ Dead . . . father dead . . . O ! it is impossible. 
He would have made some sign before he died ! ” 

“ His ship was destroyed at sea,” said Major Methuen, 
gently. “No one was saved, or so the papers say.” 

“ Is that all ? ” she said, looking at him. “ Why I thought 
some one had seen his body — had buried him — my dear, 
darling Dad. But if he has only been lost at sea, he is safe. 
Does not the sea often give up its dead ? No, not its dead*” 
she added, shivering ; “ I mean those who have been thought 
to be dead ; and there are boats, and he could swim.” 

“The ship was burnt to the very water’s edge,’ said 
Major Methuen, sadly, for later details had come with the 
morning papers. “ She showed a sheet of flame against a 
black sky, but every soul on board was dead when help 
reached her.” 

“ How do you know that my father was on board ? ” she 
said, still with that pale strength of regard, that tearless look. 
“ He may not have gone with the ship all the way. Was it 
homeward or outward bound when — when this happened ? ” 


u 4 E YRE'S A CQ UITTAL. 

‘ Homeward. Your father booked his passage out and 
back in it, and in the course of another twelve days should 
have been here.” 

“ That is true,” she said, trembling. “ I have been count- 
ing the days. . . But it is not true,” she cried, with the first 
ring of passion in her voice that he had yet heard. “ He 
loved me so, and I him. . . On which day did it happen ? ” 
she said, turning to him quickly, “ for I must have known it 
— got some hint ” 

“ It was on Monday, at Sundown,” he said, “ immediately 
before a violent storm at sea.” 

“ And on Monday I was happy ,” she said ; “ happier than 
I have been since he went away. I was thinking of you and 
of him all day, and I fell asleep here at sundown and dreamed 
that I had joined your hands together across the cowslip 
gate.” 

The man before her groaned and turned away . . . had 
not her maiden dreams fulfilled themselves, and might he 
not go through the cowslip gate now as often as he listed, 
while to her was not the dead for ever shrined in her heart, 
the human idol that in life 'must have fallen shattered at her 
feet ? 

“ He lives,” she cried, and the triumphant joy of her voice 
startled him as he turned to look at her, the color in her 
cheek, the light in her eye, the look of faith as strongly 
stamped on her features as it had been on Job’s in those 
days before he found his “ salvation ” ; “ but do you not wish 
him to live ? ” she said, suddenly ; “ do you — God forgive 
you — wish him dead ? ” 

He looked at her without a word, his face growing stern 
as he looked. Did he wish his enemy dead, did he see hap- 
piness for himself and her beyond Mr. Eyre’s death, the 
gates of Paradise opening to him who had so long stood 
starved and lonely without ? In his heart he knew he had 
been saying, “ Please God, it is true,” ever since he heard 
the news ; but now — now — 

“ Is he the first and the best in all the world to vou, Mad- 
cap ? ” 

“ The first and the best,” she said, with the first falter 
that had come into her voice ; “ he will always be the first 
and the best in the whole world to me.” 

“ Then please God he lives,” he said, slowly, as he turned 
away, looking out with blind eyes at the sunny glades, the 
cool shadows beyond. 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


XI S 

“ He can swim miles,” said the girl, a little restlessly : 
“ and there are desert islands, are there not, at sea ? ” 

Major Methuen shuddered — perhaps at the thought of a 
man being so cast away— -perhaps thinking a lost soul in hell 
could not suffer such torture as must be Mr. Eyre’s portion, 
living solitary .with such a secret as he held locked in his 
breast for sole company by night and day ? Something in 
his averted look, his attitude, perhaps the fear against which 
she had so stubbornly fought, suddenly pierced her, and she 
stepped noiselessly to her old seat, her face to the tree, all 
her high courage gone at a breath. 

So he saw her when he turned, and thought her uncon- 
scious, as he had seen her mother once, in a short, sharp 
season of bitter misery ; and his voice was harsh with pain 
as he kneeled beside her, crying out, under his breath, “ O ! 
my little one — my dear, my dear ! ” . . . 

She heard him, and turned. 

“ Why do you pity me ? ” she said. “ Do not do that till 
we are sure that he is dead .... Then you may pity me, as 
you might have pitied my mother if she had lost him.” 

A feeling of powerlessness overcame the man who heard 
her. Here was the stanch devotion of the older Madcap over 
again, that Mr. Eyre himself alone could break, or that higher 
power who 

Keeps a niche 

In Heaven to hold our idols . . . albeit 
He brake them to our faces and denied 
That our close kisses should impair their white. 

11 How long shall I have to wait before there is a message 
from him ?” she said, standing up. “ If it will be more than 
a few days, I cannot bear it. But he will be as quick as he 
can.” . . . Her eyes wandered around, and she seemed for a 
moment or two to listen to the frivolous interruptions that had 
at intervals crossed her misery during the past time, the hum 
of insects, the bird cries, the low multitudinous sounds that 
swell the forest life. Then suddenly she stretched out her 
hands, and trembled in every limb. 

“ If it is true,” she said, “ father . . . father . . . and it is 
through your care and love I am living now . . . always loving 
always good. . . . O ! Dad . . . Dad ”... 

“ There, cry,” said Major Methuen, as the slow tears 
dropped through her fingers. “ Cry as hard as you can, my 
poor, poor little soul.” 

“ No,” she said, looking up, 4 I will not, It is like mak 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


116 

ing sure that he is dead . . •. if — if — but I will not think of it. 
And there is Doune to comfort ... he will be sorry now that 
he did not love him more . . . But it was kind of you to come 
and tell me,” she added, looking at her companion as if from a 
great way off. “ Only I do not think you are sorry about 
father ; and you might forgive him, now that ypu think he is 
dead.” 

For awhile he did not answer her ; then he said, slowly, as 
one out of whom the words are wrung, 

“ If my wishing could bring him back, he should be here ; 
if the sacrifice of my life could make your happiness, Madcap, 
I would give it — for your mother’s sake and you, and since 
neither of you could live without him, and he is always to be 
first and best in two such faithful hearts.” 

“ Yes,” said the girl, “ always the first — always the best. 
And now I am going home — home !” She trembled as she re- 
peated the word, “ as if it could be that without him. . . itwill be 
all dreary and empty till he comes back (she had stepped down 
into the hollow, and was walking swiftly) for if the boys come 
to-day, they must not stay — it would torment me to see them 
watching and listening for 1 every sound, and I would rather 
meet him all alone. ... No one on earth can love him as 
well as I do.” 

They went nearly in silence the rest of the way, but when 
they reached the cowslip gate she stopped, and held out her 
hand. 

“ Good-by,” she said ; “ grief has made me very selfish — 
but I am grateful to you all the same” . . . and went quickly 
through the gate into the light beyond, leaving him alone in 
the shadows, yet with the pulse of a passionate new hope and 
life stirring him to his inmost fibre as he watched that slender 
shape in white disappear. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

Doune, with wet towels round his head, was “ sporting 
his oak ” on the day of Madcap’s trouble, and would not have 
opened his door if every don in Oxford had thundered for 
admission, while Gordon had been on the river since day- 
break, returning only to eat and turn in to those blessed 


E YRE'S A CQ UITTAL. uj 

slumbers that never (save when he thought over long of Mad- 
cap) failed him. 

But next morning they heard the news, and started at 
once for Lovel, where they found Madcap in her usual white 
gown and a white flower in her belt, and whiter roses yet on 
her cheeks, reading quietly in Mr. Eyre’s study. 

“ He is not dead,” she said, as they both flew to her, and 
Doune kissed her mouth and Gordon her cheek, while the 
fouif strong young arms went round her as though she were a 
baby, instead of something infinitely stronger than either of 
them ; “ and you must not spoil your studies,” she said to 
Doune, as she kissed him ; “ so you and Gordon will go back 
to-morrow, and I will stay quietly here and wait for Dad.” 

In vain Gordon pleaded to be allowed to go to the 
Towers, and be within call until some more certain informa- 
tion of Mr. Eyre was forthcoming ; in vain Doune, whose 
stubborn heart was at last vanquished, and who now knew 
how truly and sincerely his father had won him, refused to 
return to his beloved books : at the end of two days Madcap 
got her way, and sent them back for the remaining fortnight 
of the term. 

Perhaps her faith had infected them both, perhaps she 
had been kinder to Gordon than she had ever been before ; 
but the hearts of both young men were lighter as they started 
than when they came ; and, if pale, Madcap showed no signs 
of sadness as she stood on the station platform to see them 

go* 

“ And not a bit of black on her ! ” said the villagers, as 
she drove back through Lovel, her favorite gray pony Tom- 
my flying before the wind, as was his wont, though he had 
the sense of a Christian, and would dance sedately down hill 
like a Court gentleman, and had never done his mistress any 
worse trick than to tear her gloves into ribbons when she 
tried to check his pace on level or uphill ground. 

But, fast as she flew, she had time to see at the entrance 
to Synge Lane a man and woman standing, so absorbed in 
talk that one at least did not see her as she passed by. 

She knew the man at a glance, though his back was to- 
wards her ; but the woman, who looked up, was a stranger- 
dark, blue-eyed, raven-haired, olive-complexioned, though 
her lips were red — a face to haunt one by reason of its beauty 
and the history that it carried. 

Madcap saw the whole scene in a flash, but she did not 
see how the woman started and went pale as death as she 


it8 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


passed, as one who sees the ghost of one who long ago was 
a friend to him. Madcap had unconsciously colored as she 
went by, but, though she pulled up once or twice before she 
reached the Red Hall, asked the villagers no questions as to 
what strangers were sojourning in Lovel. 

She thought they looked at her oddly, and with a furtive 
excitement that she did not understand ; but glances counted 
for little with her in this curious phase of her young life, in 
which she seemed to walk as in a twilight where none lived 
yet none were dead, and she might cling with human love, 
yet remember with that reverence which makes a martyr of 
the humblest dead. 

In these days she felt none of that longing for human 
companionship and voices that had lately tormented her ; she 
would sit for hours in her father’s study, or stand before her 
mother’s portrait, and learn his character from her looks, 
and even studied the face of Lady Sara Villiers, the evil 
genius (as she had once accidently heard) of the family, but 
found in the dark glowing face not one tithe of the beauty of 
that living, flesh and blood face she had seen beside Major 
Methuen in the village. She never went to the cowslip gate 
now — never went beyond sight of the house-door ; for how, 
if her father should come back and find none to welcome 
him ? 

Day by day he grew dearer in her eyes ... he was so 
faithful, he had loved her mother so dearly ; and this stranger 
to whom her heart had so gone out, who had loved her 
mother too, was lingering in the village because he had met 
with an old sweetheart, or perhaps had found anew one. . . . 

She had told neither Doune nor Gordon of this stranger, 
for why should she — or, again, why not ? There was not a 
trait of deceit in her ; but here a curious reticence asserted 
itself, and since no questions were asked she volunteered no 
replies. 

But one day very early in July a telegram was brought to 
her in an envelope of the usual color. 

“ It is from father,” she said aloud, and opened it with a 
firm hand. 

It was from Mr. Eyre, dated Paris, and bade her expect 
him home on the evening of the following day. For awhile 
she sate quite still — did ever the ease of the rolling of the 
stone from a human heart equal the past misery inflicted by 
its weight ? Then she said, — 

“ You will prepare everything for your master, Saunders 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


*19 

— for he will be here to-morrow ; ” then she ran out to be 
alone with her great joy. 

Her feet took her along the familiar path without her bid- 
ding ; it was only when she reached the cowslip gate that 
she remembered how long it was since she had been there. 

. . . but she was now carried beyond herself, lifted into that 
kind of exultation which follows on the granting in full the 
one supreme prayer of a human soul, and when she looked 
up and saw Major Methuen on the other side, it seemed to 
her natural enough that he should be there. 

“ Do you know it already ? ” she said, eagerly. “ Have 
you already heard it in the village — that he will be home to- 
morrow ? ” 

He neither spoke nor moved ; he could not keep out the 
darkness from his eyes, the grayness that stole over his fea- 
tures, as he said, 

“ Thank God ! — for you.” 

She had come through the cowslip gate as she spoke, and 
it had closed behind her, for ever shutting him out from his 
kingdom, though she stood beside him, and some glimmering 
of the grief, the loss, the utter shipwreck to which his life had 
come, reached her soul as she looked at him and stretched 
out a gentle hand in token of friendship. He took it silently, 
looking down on* it — half an hour ago how near it was, and 
now how far away ! 

“ Good-by,” he said ; “ I have wished you more than one 
false good-by, Madcap, but this is a real one.” 

He kissed her f^and and laid it down by her side. . . was 
there a tear upo&^t, or had it fallen from her own eyes as 
she looked up to find herself alone ? 

Long she stood and gazed at it, gazed till the memory of 
the man was woven in her heart for ever, till in the long 
years in which she saw him not, the thought of him was to 
her as 

A power in which to sleep, 

Full of soft dreams an 1 health, and quiet breathing. 


120 


E YK E’S A CQ U/TTAL. 


PART III. 


CHAPTER I. 

The tulips were all in full blow between Grosvenor and 
Stanhope Gates — the haughty yellow, the imperial scar- 
let, the pink, the white, the rose-red ; here a bed of pale 
young beauties opening their mauve skirts to show pink 
satin slips within, there a fair army of white and rose whose 
mingled hues showed more daintily than those concentrated 
masses of color which seemed to dazzle the eye as it gazed. 

“ Look ! ” cried a girl who sat on the box-seat of a coach 
that a handsome young man was tooling past the tulips, “ that 
is the prettiest sight I have seen in London^yet ! ” 

“ They get them up very well here, don’t they ? ” said 
the young man, not taking his eyes off his horses, for, though 
early in the season, the park was rather' full, and he had no 
intention of “ spilling” the precious personagfe who sate beside 
him, to say nothing of the duenna and ^jWants who sate 
behind. 

“ Yes,” said the girl, looking at him indignantly, “ that is 
just it — they are too well got up — they won’t bow to the 
wind or — or tremble to the rain, and they are not worth any 
one of my wild flowers at home ! ” 

“ That’s right,” said the young man heartily, but without 
looking at her. “ I like to hear you say that. To be sure, 
‘ there is no place like home ’ ; and I shall be glad enough to 
settle down there when this confounded season is over.” 

The girl did not answer ; her eyes were fixed on the wind- 
swept, budding trees, for there had been a storm over-night, 
and the wind had done more than the rain in freshening, 
clearing, and making sweet the air that almost smelled of 
country this morning, and partly made her understand how, 
even in a city, spring. must be beautiful. 

“ Who is the girl ? ” saj d one male gossip to another, and 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


12 I 


looked at the coach, now, for a moment or so, checked by a 
crowd of equestrians passing into the Row. 

“ Eyre’s daughter,” said the other ; “ the man who was 
supposed to murder his wife.” 

“ Didn’t he ? And who’s the man ? ” 

“ Lord Lovel of Lovel.” 

“ She is well turned out,” said the second gossip, looking 
at her from head to heel ; “ and he is good form — very ; so 
is the coach ; horses matched to a hair ; and the servants’ 
looks and liveries admirably chosen. He has large estates ?.” 

“Yes; out of all proportion to his income. The late 
Lord Lovel was once engaged to the girl’s mother, and left 
Eyre’s daughter all his personal estate — amounting to about 
ten thousand a year. And, of course, the young pair are en- 
gaged.” 

“ Of course.” 

“ But she’ll soon lose that look, eh ? Evidently doesn’t 
know a soul. Fancy looking at treetops in the park ! ” 

“ She can afford to ; such a face as that will make men 
climb to look at it.. She needn’t look down.” 

“ Poetical, b;y*|j ove ! ” 

“ Yes ; I knew her mother. Eyre would make her go 
through a London? season, just to disgust her with human 
nature, I suppo^bj till she begged him to take her home. 
Even her children" couldn’t console her, and he never brought 
her again. She preferred hearts and homes to society and 
houses. And the daughter is her living image,” added the 
man, as the coach moved on ; “ and Eyre himself has aged 
very little in seventeen years.” 

“ Gone into Parliament, hasn’t he ? Makes the House 
listen when he speaks ? He always did — not the House — 
but people. And his son is more brilliant still; likely to do 
some harm in his time, or die in a madhouse.” 

“ Insanity in the family ? ” 

“ No ; but eccentricity to the last degree. The Villiers 
strain brought it in ; but perhaps it’s wearing out.” 

“ Surely that’s Methuen ? ” 

“ Yes, with his mother. First time I ever saw him here.” 

“ Awkward fellow that ; forgets all his old friends, and 
makes no new ones. Hates to be mistaken for the late 
Lord Lovel — a little touched, eh ? ” 

“ Not a doubt of it. He seems to know Eyre’s daughter ; 
he raised his hat to her as she passed.” 

“ Very likely. Lovel and Methuen fought together in 


I22 EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 

the Crimea ; joined at the last moment, and Lovel was 
killed.” 

“ And who has Eyre got as sheep-dog ? ” 

“ Didn’t you see her ? Lady Ann Lovel — the boy’s 
great-aunt.” 

The other man grimaced. 

“ Not such a bad choice. She can still climb a coach 
without looking ridiculous, and has the quietest tongue and 
the profoundest experience in London. No fear of the 
golden apples being seized with such an Hesperides to keep 
guard. So Eyre wishes the match ? ” 

“ He buried his heart in his wife’s grave — a daughter ’s 
well enough, but she ’s not a wife.” 

“ He won’t marry again ? ” 

“ Not he — the Duchess of Marmiton couldn’t persuade 
him — and if she couldn’t — no one else will.” 

“ So that ’s why she still mourns the Duke ? ” 

“ To be sure. Eyre was a devil of a fellow among the 
women at one time, and he made a fool of her among the 
rest — but he is invulnerable now.” 

“ Having lost his power, of charming ? ” said the other 
man. 

“ Not he. Ask the Duchess.” 

“ She means to introduce the girl ? ” 

“No doubt but where’s the good ? She is her mother 
over again — she will run away from all the finery, and marry 
that handsome young fellow in a village^hurch.” 

“ But her mother married an old onerljL^ 

“ Yes — worse luck for her.” 

“The Honorable Nancy looks very fit to-day,” said the 
other gossip, exhausted by a subject that he had only so long 
pursued because Madcap’s face charmed him. 

“Yes — Lovel’s first cousin — he might do worse than 
marry her , if Eyre’s daughter throws him over.” 

Meanwhile Madcap sate excited, with shining eyes, and 
longed to ask Gordon to turn his horses’ heads that she 
might get another glimpse of the man whom she had not seen 
for two years, and who had long ago passed into her memory 
as a friend. 

And he had remembered her, though she must have al- 
tered surely, and had saluted her — how lucky that Gordon 
did not see him, for how could she excuse the silence she 
had preserved about him all this time ? What could she say 


EYXE'S ACQUITTAL. 


123 

if she met him in society one day when she was with her 
father, and he approached her ? 

But she felt that she did not care, she was so happy, so hap- 
py to see him once again, and her voice startled Gordon with 
its joy as at Victoria Gate she begged him go back and draw 
up for a little while because she wished to look at the “ peo- 
ple,” as they went by. 

“ But I thought you wartted to see some trees,” said Gor- 
don, considerably astonished at her change of mind ; and he 
turned to find her radiant as in her wildest days, and look- 
ing so bewitching that not even the unbecoming altitude at 
which she sate could spoil her or check the murmur of admi- 
ration that presently ran along the idlers who hung about 
the rails or moved to and fro. 

But it was early yet, not yet one o’clock, the Eyres hav- 
ing brought their country habits with them to town ; so that 
usually they rode before breakfast and drove before lunch- 
eon, and, as far as possible, lived their usual lives in the 
midst of unusual surroundings. 

But if Lady Ann, as a fashionable woman, sometimes felt 
ridiculous at appearing so unseasonably, she was satisfied to 
see Madcap so indifferent to society and admiration, and 
happy only with her family and Gordon. To be sure, there 
had scarcely been time for a new lover to appear on the hori- 
zon, but with the engagement between the young pair tacit- 
ly understood everywhere, there was little chance of any 
suitor showing himself bold enough to enter the lists against 
the established lover. 

“ This is much pleasanter than the ball last night,” said 
Madcap, drawing in a deep breath of the almost pure air, 
while her eyes roved hither and thither among the passers-by, 
looking for a face that she could not find. 

“ All balls are nuisances,” said Gordon. “ I’m awfully 
glad you like the coach,” he added, as Madcap turned from 
exchanging a few words with Lady Ann. 

“ Who was that gentleman who raised his hat to you, my 
dear ? ” said the faithful sheep-dog, while Gordon was lean- 
ing over to speak to a friend below. 

“ What gentleman ? ” said Madcap, looking innocent. 
“ I have seen more than one man that I danced with last 
night.” 

But Lady Ann wondered what had brought such new life 
and color into the girl’s face, and resolved to keep her eyes 
open. 


124 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 

But as gradually the park filled with its smart morning 
ranks of folk on foot, Madcap grew suddenly tired of it all, 
and begged Gordon to take her down past Holland Park, as 
they had intended to do on starting. 

“ And to-morrow morning we will walk in the Park,” she 
said, restlessly, as they went bowling down the almost desert- 
ed drive. 

“ One cannot speak to any one up here — and we are sure 
to meet some one or other that we know, are we not ? ” 

“ Are you in such a hurry to meet your partners again ? ” 
said Gordon, a shade on his brow ; “ and you made fun 
enough of them, too, coming home.” 

“ Yes,” said Madcap, “ so I did ; and I think it very ridi- 
culous that one may not pick and choose one’s own part- 
ners ” 

“ A pretty state of things it would be if introductions were 
done away with,” said Gordon in high disdain. 

“ Do you think so ? ” said Madcap, with spirit. “ Now, 
if I were a great lady I would print ‘ no introductions ’ on all 
my ball-cards, and leave the guests to please their taste in 
the choice of partners — to chobse the prettiest, the wittiest, 
or the one that he liked best ! Think what conversation one 
might have getting up stairs — what groans one might ex- 
change over the heat — what home-truths one might hear of 
oneself — what odd lights on prominent subjects one might 
gather — even learn the name of some of the celebrities with 
whom one rubbed elbows — perhaps persons whom one has 
longed to see all one’s life, but who look just like everybody 
else after all ! ” 

“ It would never answer, Madcap,” said Gordon. *• No 
decent fellow was ever picked by a girl without a proper in- 
troduction.” 

“ Was there not ? ” said Madcap, her eyes resting on the 
brown trees just ruffled with green in Kensington Gardens. 
“ But to continue, I have an idea about the celebrities. Why 
should not a woman carry her name emblazoned on her fan, 
and a man his on the inside of his opera-hat.” 

. “ Why not come as sandwich men and women at once ? ” 
said Gordon dryly. 

“ Or better still, for the hostess to have a panel in the wall 
that is illuminated by his name in his presence, and goes out 
when he departs ? ” 

# “ Like Willing’s new*advertisements on the underground,” 
said Gordon, intent on his horses, now they had reached the 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL , 


I2 5 


High-street. “ No, no, Madcap. There are rules about 
these things, and if you broke them, you would only be mis- 
understood ” 

“ Would a man misunderstand a child if she were friendly 
with him, even though she had never had the shibboleth of 
introduction mumbled over her ? ” said Madcap, with her 
head turned away. 

“ But you are not a child,” said Gordon. “ You are grown 
up now — thank Heaven ! And so am I. And what do 
you want with strangers, dear? You’ve got us” 

“ Yes,” she said ! “ but father is away so much. So is 
Doune ; while you are quite happy with your team ” 

“ I only had it to please you,” said Gordon, coloring with 
disappointment, “ because you said you could not live in town 
without fresh air ; and I thought I would drive you out some- 
where every day ” 

“ That is true,” she said, gently. “ But I am tired and 
cross, Geordie ; and I would like to fall asleep this minute, 
and wake up in the woods, with no balls or fine London ways 
to worry me ! ” 

“ It will soon be over,” said the young man. “ And your 
father would have it so. But cheer up. You will never be 
asked to come up here a second time ! ” 

“ I shall come every year that father wishes it,” she said, 
coldly ; “ but it will not be for long. You know he only 
went into Parliament to nurse the seat for Doune, who will 
be old enough to take it within a very few years.” 

“ He went into the House to please himself,” said Gordon, 
as the four roans neared Kensington. “ He never could settle 
down, and he never will , since he went away on that journey 
two years ago.” 

“ He loves me just the same,” said Madcap, proudly, 
though tears were in her eyes ; “ and it is not likely that he 
would be satisfied with the quiet life that suits boys — and a 
girl.” 

She looked at one of the ‘‘ boys ” as she said it, and saw 
a young man of the best type of muscular English manhood, 
and dressed so that one was as ignorant of his clothes as an 
aborigine is of his — yet felt the pleasure of seeing him ex- 
actly right in every particular, from the body that his clothes 
fitted upwards to the glance that every Lovel claimed as his 
birthright. But her eyes were cold as she looked at him — 
how like he was to those other men that she met at every 
step in New Bond-street (while a beautiful woman or girl 


126 


E YRE'S A CQ UITTAL. 


came as far between, as a pearl in a shipload of oysters) ; but 
never had she seen the fellow to the seamed, sunburnt face 
that, two years hidden from her, she had seen in the park 
that day. 

Lady Ann supposed the man who took off his hat to the 
girl had danced with her over-night, and, like a good watch- 
dog, questioned her later at the first opportunity. 

“ He is an old friend/’ said Madcap, gravely. “ His 
name ? I have christened him, “ Lancelot of the Lake ” — he 
knew mother very well — and father/’ she added, after a 
pause. 

Lady Ann thought no more of the sad-faced, middle-aged 
man — her eyes were open enough to young wooers who 
might cut out Gordon, but not to friends of the last gener- 
ation. 

A few people had recognized Madcap when Gordon drew 
up as the lovely young dtbutante introduced to London society 
by the Duchess of Marmiton over-night ; but a great many 
people who knew her mother’s story were on the lookout, for 
her as she came back, her wistful eyes wandering to and fro 
amongst the faces below as if she were seeking what she 
could not find. Was she happy ? the curious asked as they 
looked at her, young, with the downy cheeks of a child and 
the beauty of a woman in her eyes and lips, the mistress of 
ten thousand a year, and engaged to one of the handsomest 
young fellows in town, her neighbor, Lord Lovel ? 

The women picked her to pieces because they could not 
forgive her for being as perfectly turned out as her equipage, 
for, of course, they said she furnished it, since Lord Lovel 
was so poor ; and thus, Gordon’s sole extravagance that sea- 
son, and for which he denied himself things that other men 
took as a matter of course, was turned into an occasion of 
reproach^ to him, as he accidentally found out later. 

His heart was heavy enough when he drew up at Curzon 
Street, for to-day it seemed that less than ever he had been 
able to please Madcap ; but Mr. Eyre, who happened to be 
in the dining-room and looking out, thought he had seldom 
seen a prettier sight than the drag as it came down the 
street, the sun shining on the harness and the horses’ satin 
coats, with the two handsome young faces behind to com- 
plete the picture. 

*&he saw him standing there, and when the coach stopped 
ran down the ladder at the risk of her neck, and flew to the 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


127 

dining-room, but he had retreated to the library, and was 
sitting at his table when she reached him. 

“ O ! father ! ” she cried, “ why didn’t you come with us ? 
You could have driven, and Gordon sate behind with Lady 
Ann ! ” 

He laughed in spite of himself, but looked at her keenly, 
and wondered if the mere first whiff of a London season had 
intoxicated and made her frivolous. “ Haven’t you got 
room for me on your knee ? ” she said, reproachfully, as he 
pushed some books from the chair nearest to him. “ I am 
not so very much heavier than I used to be, if I am obliged 
to be grown up ! ” 

“ Don’t you like it ? ” he said, looking her carefully over 
as she perched herself on the desired vantage ground, “ yet 
you seem very happy ” 

“ So I am now” she said, with a sigh of satisfaction. 
“ Do you know this is my fifth day in town, and this is the 
first real chance I’ve had to talk with you ? ” 

He shook his head, and thought of the lover ; for here 
was the mischief of it, and one of those dark shades to Mr. 
Eyre’s character, that from the moment he had contempla- 
ted his daughter as Gordon’s wife, possibly loving Gordon 
best in the end, the close link between himself and her was 
virtually severed, and insensibly she receded in his thoughts 
to make room for the other Madcap . . . since, though some 
one was bound to steal his daughter, no living man could 
have stolen from him his wife. 

“ No — no,” he said ; “ your place is out in the sunshine, 
and you look very well there, and you must not tire of Gor- 
don’s company thus early' child, for you have far enough to 
ride with him yet.” 

* I would rather walk in the mud beside you ,” she said, 
with an arm round his neck, and her cool cheek to his ; 
“ and why must you turn me out father, why are you so set 
on my marrying Gordon — or anybody ? ” 

“ It is a woman’s lot to marry,” said Mr. Eyre, haggling 
over the words that his wife would have known so well how 
to say to her young daughter, “ and I am growing old ” 

“ I wish Gordon would get a touch of the same com- 
plaint ! ” said^'Madcap, tears and rueful laughter struggling 
together in her eyes. “ He says he gets older with fcvery 
season ; but I can’t see the least signs of improvement ! ” 
which was true enough ; but neither could Gordon find any 
in her. 


128 


E YRE' S A CQ U/TTAL . 


If in summer he asked her to be his wife, she said she 
hated being worried in warm weather, and he could ask her 
again in autumn ; and when autumn came she said Christ- 
mas was the time for asking questions of that sort ; though 
when Christmas arrived she recommended his waiting till 
Valentine’s Day, yet found no satisfactory reply to give him 
then. Yet, half a loaf being better than no bread, he waited 
on her caprices patiently. 

Perhaps Mr. Eyre, seeing the end inevitable, had resolved 
to bring matters to a climax by throwing the young people 
together under novel conditions in town; but, any rate, 
he had moved his household thither early this spring, to 
Doune’s amazement and Madcap’s profound disgust. 

But to-day — to-day — what had come to the girl ? Mr. 
Eyre seemed to see his wife, as she had looked under the 
influence of love for him , in his daughter, whose eyes had 
deepened and darkened during the morning’s drive ; and if 
not for Gordon, then, of course, for some partner at the ball 
evernight. 

He had not thought her made of such inflammable stuff, 
and looked at her coldly as he asked her how she had en- 
joyed her first ball. 

“ It was over-crowded,” she said, “ and the flowers you 
gave me withered directly ; but the Duchess was very kind 
— and the men were all alike — though I fancied I recognized 
one or two of them in the Park to-day.” 

“ So you prefer no one to Gordon ? ” said Mr. Eyre, a 
little impatiently; “and that’s natural enough — you have 
everything in common, your country pursuits, open-air life, 
tastes, age, good looks.” 

“ And how about our hearts ? ” said Madcap, retreating 
so far to the verge of her father’s knee as to be in danger 
bf falling off. It takes two to make a bargain, does it not, 
.’■ even in love ? ” 

“Your mother and I made none,” he said, thinking of 
how, without a doubt or a fear, his true-love had fled to his 
arms as her haven. 

“ But she loved you,” said Madcap, softly ; “ not her other 
lovers.” 

“ And what do you know of your mother’s-iovers ? ” said 
Mr. Eyre, sternly ; and for the first time in her life she real- 
ized how terrible he could look in his wrath. 

“ Lord Lovel loved my mother,” she said ; “ and she 
loved you — that was all.” 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


129 


“ And perhaps, after all, she had done better to love him,'' 
said Mr. Eyre, setting his daughter down and walking rest- 
lessly to and fro; “but I’ll have you exposed to no such 
chances, child — for you might not come off so well — and that 
wretched fortune of yours would make you the quarry of every 
titled beggar in town, but for your supposed engagement to 
Lovel. And I think you are not treating him well — in short, 
ungratefully ” 

“ Why should I be grateful to him for loving me more 
than I wish ? ” says Madcap, sadly. “ Does any girl ever 
willingly leave her father, her home, everything to go away 
with a young man just because he asks her ? I can't under- 
stand it.” And this was true. ... no inward teaching had 
yet come to the girl to make such departure the most natural 
beautiful thing in the world. 

Mr. Eyre stopped to look at her, and his face softened — 
he held out his arms and she ran into them. 

“ You shall not go till you are willing” he said. “ God 
knows I don’t want to lose you — though I have been staring 
that fact in the face these two years — but blame yourself if 
Gordon falls in love with some one else one of these 
days ” 

“ If only he would !” said Madcap, brilliant satisfaction 
lighting up herface at the idea, “ and leave you and me to 
be happy together ! ” 

Mr. Eyre pinched her cheek, and asked if he and she did 
not dine out together that night. 

“ To be sure,” said Madcap, jumping for joy, “ and with- 
out the sheep-dog ; ” she added, in a cautious whisper, as she 
looked round, “ O ! Dad, why need I have had one ? ” 

“ Does she worry you ? ” said Mr. Eyre. “ I chose her 
for her silence, and remember, child, that though the Duchess 
and she may dress, shoe, metamorphose your body as they 
please (within certain limits), I expect them to leave your 
manners as they found them. And how do you like the 
Duchess ? ” 

“ I don’t know ; I have only seen her twice.” 

“ That’s right ; always reserve your judgment. But she 
is a good, faithful sort of woman, and means well ; and since 
you must see life a little, you may as well do so under good 
auspices.” 

“ But why must I, father ? ” said Madcap. 

“ Ah, why ? ” he said. “ Perhaps I want to make you in 
love with the country. Perhaps I can’t live in town without 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


130 

you. I shall be a little anxious about you to-night, as the 
party is a small one, and your conversation will be remarked. 
But you can’t do wrong if you forget all about yourself, your 
face, and your gown. Remember, those twelve hours in 
which you can think about yourself ; in the other twelve hours 
do not talk of it. And you are too young to be expected to 
start topics, so you must cultivate listening, and you will soon 
have the best talkers at your service. Then you must not 
lay yourself out for attraction ; you are not a shop, to put all 
your best thoughts and graces for sale in the window ; keep 
them for home, where they will be most valued. There’s the 
luncheon bell, and I think I heard Doune come in just now.’’ 

“ Here is Gordon’s only rival,” thought Lady Ann, as 
Madcap came laughing into the room on her father’s arm, 
and smiled, not ill-pleased that there should be only such a 
rival in the field. 


CHAPTER II. 

The library clock had struck a quarter to eight, and Mr. 
Eyre looked up a little impatiently, wondering what detained 
Madcap. For his heart was full of her that day ; for the first 
time since he sailed away in the Arizona the link between 
him and his daughter knit close as in her childish days, and 
satisfaction at holding the first place in her heart extinguished 
regrets for the young fellow’s disappointment. 

For the first time since that Sunday when he had seemed 
to wake from a dream, he felt something of the old peace that 
had preceded his awakening, and was already thinking of the 
country and those peaceful pursuits that had lost their charm 
for him since his return from that fruitless journey upon 
which he had set out on the ill-starred sailing-ship Arizona. 
He had never meant to return by her, and, intent on follow- 
ing up clue after clue of Hester Clarke, did not for days hear 
of the catastrophe that had pierced Madcap’s heart, and even 
then he was thinking less of his daughter than the woman 
whom he believed to have tracked to her hiding-place at last. 

But the thread broke in his hands, when he found the ob- 


BYTE'S ACQUITTAL. 


* 3 * 

ject of his unremitting pursuit indeed, but dead ’ and not long 
buried ; so that once more he turned homewards with de- 
spair in his heart, yet still that stubborn resolve to wrest truth 
from dead or living yet. 

Meanwhile, he threw himself into the exercise of his 
brain ; and when, six months after his return, he was asked 
once more to stand as Conservative member of the county, 
he consented ; and, being duly returned, might have become 
a shining light in the House had he so willed. But very 
quickly he wearied of such legalized schoolboy antics as he 
witnessed each day ; and, not caring to accept office under 
the present government, never troubled to exert the powerful 
influence he possessed, and in his third session called up 
Madcap, who was dearest to him still — next to the dead. 

He looked up to see her standing near him, satin shod, 
gazing at him with those eyes of love that have no copy ; 
and, as he glanced her over carefully, he saw that Mrs. Ma- 
son's taste had not betrayed the girl ... for here was a 
morning face clad in a primrose gown, edged with pearls, 
and choicer ones about her neck and arms, and with a curi- 
ous fan, made of white flowers, in her hands, that he had 
himself ordered her that morning. 

“ Have I kept you waiting, father ? ” she said. “ But I 
have been standing here some minutes, though you did not 
see me.” 

Something of his lost happiness, his lost future, seemed 
to come back to him as he went forward and kissed her, then 
led her to the brougham that had been one of his extrava- 
gances for her, desiring that “ beauty should go beautifully,” 
he had ordered the inside fittings of the carriage to be of 
white, the finest setting of all for a young girl’s face. 

Many people who looked at the two as they passed down 
Piccadilly, thought Madcap must be wife to the brilliant-eyed 
middle-aged man by whom she sate, so joyous she looked 
and so entirely was she engrossed by his conversation. 

They had almost reached their destination, Whitehall, 
when a check came in their progress and the jar of oppos- 
ing wheels made Madcap look up startled to see that their 
carriage had become locked with a hansom going in the con- 
trary direction, and with a bound of the heart, a sinking of 
her pulse, saw that the occupant of the hansom was Major 
Methuen. 

He was looking full at her — at the attitude of father and 


* 3 * 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


daughter as they sate side by side in that white nest, Mr. 
Eyre’s ungloved hand in her two primrose ones — his eyes in 
one flash taking in every detail of her loveliness, then his 
eyes left her to meet those of Mr. Eyre in a lightning glance 
of recognition that made Mr. Eyre spring forward with a 
fierce cry of 

“ Frcuik ! ” 

But on the instant the wheels unlocked, the horses sprang 
forward ; before Mr. Eyre could recover from the kind of 
horror in which he was plunged, the carriage and the han- 
som were three hundred yards apart. 

He pulled the check-string like a madman. For the 
first time in her life Madcap saw him thrown completely off 
his balance, and trembled as he bade the coachman turn and 
drive back for his life ; himself leaning out of the window as 
they thundered up St. James’s-street ; but in every hansom 
they overtook searched in vain for the face that had startled 
him. 

Madcap sate pale and cold. What did it all mean ? Why 
had not Major Methuen acknowledged her, and what meant 
that extraordinary look which she had intercepted on its way to 
her father ? And now came the first fruits of the deceit she 
had practised towards her people in never speaking of her 
acquaintance with Lord Lovel’s friend ; and she dreaded the 
moment when Mr. Eyre should turn to face her. 

Common-sense made him abandon a mad pursuit in a 
very few minutes ; and when they were once more approach- 
ing their destination, Mr. Eyre sat down and turned to Mad- 
cap. 

“ Have I frightened you, child ? ” he said. “ But I’ve 
seen a ghost — Frank’s ghost — fourteen years older than when 
I saw him last, in his coffin ; but those were his eyes, and he 
recog)iized me. Surely I’m not going mad — andit^;/7be a 
chance resemblance — don’t I know his face by heart ? ” 

“ But if he had known you ? O ! what am I saying ? ” 
said Madcap. “ How could a ghost bow to one ? It must 
be some curious resemblance.” She blushed and looked 
away. “ Gordon says there are numbers of men in town who 
have their doubles, and are constantly mistaken for one an- 
other, even hear all each other’s secrets, and are made love 
to by proxy ! ” 

The carriage stopped at that moment, and Mr. Eyre was 
his usual self as he took her into the house ; but very early , 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL 


*33 

during dinner asked his hostess if she had ever met a man in 
town exactly like the late Lord Lovel. 

She had not ; but as the party, though small, included 
the inevitable dinner-out whose memory constituted his liv- 
ing, Mr. Eyre was soon informed that Frank’s doppelganger 
was a certain Major Methuen, who, curiously enough, had 
been his friend, and fought beside him in 'the Crimea. 

“ Methuen ! ” exclaimed Mr. Eyre, thinking of a letter 
he had received years ago. “ What is his club ? ” he added. 

“ Naval and Military ; but he rarely shows there. Hates 
to be spoken to ; got a little touched in the head through 
sunstroke in India, and won’t answer if by mistake any one 
addresses him as ‘ Lovel.’ ” 

“ I shall try and find him to-morrow,” said Mr. Eyre, 
carelessly ; and the subject dropped. 

Madcap heard all, and grew paler as the evening passed ; 
for what could this meeting between the two men bring about 
but trouble ? And yet, if the antipathy felt by Major 
Methuen were due to his friendship for Lord Lovel and his 
being a little w touched,” might not they come to some such 
good understanding as might bring him into her life again ? 

As they drove home Mr. Eyre said, — 

“ You have always wanted to see Frank, child ; well, you 
have seen him to-day — as he would have been if he lived — 
but it has given me a queer turn — almost as if I had died 
and come back a ghost to find a stranger strutting in my 
image. But why, if that was Methuen, he should look at me 
as if I were his enemy, God knows ; unless, being Frank’s 
friend, he has taken up his quarrels.” 

“ Did you quarrel with Lord Lovel, father ? ” said Mad- 
cap, trembling. 

“ Not I — but he behaved ill to me, and would never come 
to any explanation — though two minutes face to face would 
have put an end to the misunderstanding. Perhaps 
Methuen has the key to the riddle — (Madcap started at the 
excited note in her father’s voice) — if so, I’ll borrow or steal 
it.” 

So there had been only a misunderstanding between her 
father and Lord Lovel, and two such men as Mr. Eyre and 
Lancelot must understand each other, when they met, thought 
Madcap, though still cast down by thoughts of her deceit. 
And surely, if only for the sake of his child-friend, for her 
likeness to that other Madcap he had known and loved, this 
man would bury the hatchet, and make friends. 


EYRE S ACQUITTAL. 


*34 

And through all her thoughts ran the lilt of an old tong, 
that seemed to sing in at her ears and heart : — 

“ And will I see his face again ? 

And will I hear him speak ? 

I'm downright dizzy wi’ the thocht ; 

In troth I’m like to greet.’’ 


CHAPTER III. 

“ Madcap ! ” cried Doune, as, coming quickly into the 
breakfast-room, he found his sister there alone ; “ what are 
you doing here so early ? I thought you and Lady Ann 
never rose till nine ? ” 

“ Then you have thought wrong,/’ said Madcap, turning 
a shoulder, not a cheek, to Doune’s offered kiss ; “ though, 
to be sure, I wonder you took the trouble to think at all on 
the subject ! ”, 

“ Have I neglected you, Madcap ? ” said the young fel- 
low, remorsefully. “ But you see I have never stayed in town 
before ; and there is so much to interest one, and I like to 
hear father speak ” 

“ But you never listen to me!'' 1 said Madcap, who had 
kept a bone to pick with her brother these five years, and 
now produced it. “ It is always read, read ; learn, learn ; 
but no pouring out , no passing on of your treasures to other 
folks. Have you ever thought how utterly selfish, how de- 
moralizing all this reading is ? ” 

“ But I have not read at all lately,” said the dark, ever 
brilliant-eyed young man ; “ I only look on, and listen ” 

“ But why can’t you talk ? ” cried Madcap, stamping her 
foot like a little fury, but laughing all the while. “ When I 
was little, you talked rigmaroles to me by the hour, but when 
I grew up, and got strong and — and stout,” she added, glan- 
cing at a mirror that showed her slim proportions, “ you took 
to those wretched books, and never thought of me again ! ” 

“ Didn’t I ?, ” he said, with something of the old boyish 
ring of jealousy in his voice. “ Well, perhaps I found out 
long ago that father is first with you and the rest nowhere.” 

“ When did you find that out ? ’’said Madcap, turning 
round, and showing a very happy face in spite of her wrongs. 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


i3S V 

“ O ! by bits,” said her brother, moodily, as he walked to 
the other window and -looked out; “but I’ve learned my 
lesson somehow, though I did not discover it in my books.” 

“ And you love me better than them ? ” she said drawing 
near. 

“ And you love me as well as father ? ” said her brother, 
facing round. 

“ Yes — only differently.” 

“There was a time,” said the young man looking at her 
with dissatisfied eyes, “ when nothing would induce you to 
put one of us before the other ; ‘ Dad and Doony ’ you would 
say when asked which you liked best ; but now ” 

“ Have I neglected you, dear ? ” she said, using his own 
question, as she came close to him and took his long supple 
hand — the hand of a scholar and thinker. 

“ Perhaps,” he said, “ we have both something to blame 
ourselves with on that score. And every day that I live I 
miss my mother more. But that is not your fault ; and, to 
be sure, I neglected you once for Gordon ; just as now, when 
father is out of the way, you neglect me for him.” 

“ For Gordon ? ” she said, as she stood on tiptoe to kiss 
her brother’s cheek. “ O ! poor Gordon ! Ask him, and he 
will tell you if I prefer his company to yours ! ” 

“ Poor Gordon, indeed ! ” said Doune, looking at her with 
some rebuke ; “ a better fellow never lived, and if you are 
going to treat him badly ” 

“ Come to the Park with us this morning and see for your- 
self how I treat him ! ” said Madcap, feeling happier in her 
home-treasures than she had done for years, “ and put all 
those fusty books out of your head, and forget all your first- 
class honors for the next three months ! ” 

. “The honors are easily forgotten,” said Doune, with one 
of those rare smiles that made him more than ever like his 
father. “ But I can’t forswear my books, Madcap, any 
more than you could your woods.” 

“ We will make a compromise,” she said : “ sometimes 
you shall come with me to the woods, and sometimes / will 
look into your books — and so we will be more together than 
we have been,” added the girl, wistfully as she put her both 
arms round her brother’s neck and kissed him with all her 
heart. 

“ Darling Madcap,” said Doune, “ I shall be glad when 
we get home again, though London is not half such a bad 
place as I expected.” 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


136 

Madcap thought it was very good, as she stood with 
Doune’s arm around her, smelling the sweet stocks and 
mignonette that filled the sills of the open window. . . . 
Hard by, a band had begun to play, and better too (in her 
ears) than the Horse Guards had played yesterday in the 
Park ; and for the nrst time she tasted the charm of that 
throbbing town life without, while she rejoiced in the home 
life within, and stood quite happy till Lady Ann came in, fol- 
lowed by Mr. Eyre. 

Both paused on the threshold confounded, and for a 
second mistook Doune for Gordon, till Madcap looked round 
and flew to her father, wishing her duenna “ Good-morning” 
by the way. 

He looked worn and unrested ; but her heart must have 
been hard that morning, for she was in wild spirits all through 
breakfast, astonishing Saunders, who thought she had taken 
one of those occasional leaves out of her father’s book in 
which he was “ fey.” 

Gordon was lodged in the Albany, and seldom showed at 
breakfast in Curzon-street ; but this morning he made Lady 
Ann, at least, happy by coming in before they had left the 
table, and contributing his quota to the brightness and good 
looks of the table. 

“ What will you do this morning ? ” he said, when he had 
reached his Princess, and found her so joyous and kind that 
his own spirits ran up like quicksilver. 

“ I shall walk," she said, “ You, Doune, and I — and 
Lady Ann,” she added, remembering her sheep-dog, with an 
effort : “ and father will come to us later — when he has got 
his business over — won’t you Dad ? ” she added, eagerly. 

“ Yes, child,” he said absently, “ unless I have to hunt 
for Methuen. But f have got his mother’s address, and shall 
find him no doubt.” 

“ Methuen ? ” said Gordon, looking up ; “ why, you will 
never catch him, sir ; he is not at home to his oldest friends, 
and in fact has forgotten them all — for he is cracked.” 

“ I wish you had half his brains,” thought Madcap, long- 
ing to box the boy’s ears, and sighing for some scar to tone 
down his beauty, while Mr. Eyre said, — 

“ You have met him — you know him by sight.” 

“ Yes,” said Gordon, “ he was pointed out to me, long ago, 
as curiously resembling the Lovels — and particularly my 
cousin Frank. It seems that he is tied to town by his mother’s 


E \ RE'S ALQUI TTAL . 


137 

illness. She is bedridden, and cannot be moved ; but he 
rarely shows anywhere, and lives like a hermit.” 

“ Then he will be the more easy to find,” said Mr. Eyre, 
as he rose and went out. 

“ What has upset father ? ” said Doune, looking after 
him ; while Gordon looked at Madcap, and strove to derive 
auguries of his day’s good from her face. 

“ He is going to pay a morning call,” said Madcap, jump- 
ing up and stretching out her arms as though she would like 
to fly for joy : “ but I must run after him, and tell him where 
to find us — beside Apollo, I think — he couldn't miss us 
there — though, for my part, I hate Apollos ! ” she added, as 
she ran out of the room. 

The young men laughed, but Lady Ann frowned — she 
saw trouble ahead, and wore her gravest look, as Gordon sate 
down beside her and asked if she had received any fresh 
news of his mother. 

“ She is coming over in June,” said Lady Ann; “ but 
your cousin Nancy ” 

“ Why are all the Lovels either Ann or Nancy ? ” said 
Madcap, laughing, as she stole between them. 

“ But I am not a Lovel,” said the elder lady, with dignity ; 
“ I merely married one — the Honorable John Lovel — it is in 
my own right that I am Lady Ann.” 

“ But Dukes’ daughters or no,” said Madcap, slily, “ there 
is always a Nancy among the Lovels — and perhaps the one 
you were talking about will suit Gordon ! ” 

She was out at the door before aunt and nephew recov- 
ered from this bomb, and had flown up stairs to Nan, who 
sate as firmly fixed to her “ seam” here as at Lovel, and 
scarcely looked up as her young mistress rushed in. 

Madcap snatched the linen out of the woman’s hands and 
tossed it behind her back ; then, as Nan stared, said, “ I am 
going to walk in the Park this morning, and you are to come 
down with me and choose my prettiest gown” — whereupon 
the woman followed, shaking her head with vague forebodings 
of unsuspected wooers as she went, and ready to find fault 
with every garment submitted to her inspection. But when 
Madcap had made her own choice, and was dressed in a 
clean cotton gown, with those minutiae of a lady’s toilette that 
mark it rigorously respected, Nan admitted that she had never 
seen her young mistress look better, or even so well, in those 
low-necked frocks that had shocked her by their boldness. 

“ After all,” cried Madcap, a couple of hours later, as, 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


r 3 8 

escorted by her two henchmen, she set out for the Park, I 
should not wonder if I ended by liking town very much.” 

“ God forbid ! ” thought Gordon : but Doune laughed 
and said, — 

“ And I prophesy that in less than a month you will 
be running away from it and hiding yourself in the remo- 
test corner of your beloved woods.” 

“ And if 1 do,” sl}£ said, “ you shall bring one of your 
beloved books, and we will sit there together, you and I ! ” 

“ And how about Gordon ? ” said Doune, seeing the shade 
on his friend’s face. 

“ Gordon may come too,” said Madcap, a little unwilling- 
ly, as a child who makes a face to itself while it gives the. 
kiss to which it is commanded ; “ but he will have lots to do 
looking after the estate ! ” 

She looked up at him with a smile, bright and cold as a 
J anuary sun, and he had never felt farther away from her as 
he walked that short step with her to the Park, while she had 
never seemed so happy before. 

For was not Doune by her side, come back to his old 
boyish love and care of her ; had not her father been kind 
yesterday, and was there not a secret, half guilty hope in her 
heart that put new rainbow tints on everything at which she 
gazed ? 

How smart and fresh the women looked in their fresh 
cottons or cambrics — how much more becoming this costly 
simplicity than the undress worn at sundown ! 

And all looked their best, and nearly all so happy — as 
glad as Madcap to shuffle off the coil of winter clothes, and 
come out in their proper shapes, and smell sweet fresh scents ; 
all eager, too, in laying plans for new pleasures, as if this 
were their first campaign, and the spring lasted for ever 
• • * and among the girl-faces Madcap’s was the brightest 
and attracted the most attention from the lookers-on. 

She was already known by sight, and by hearsay cele- 
brated as her father’s daughter, and half a dozen gossips 
who moved briskly soon finished the business, so that, after 
half an hour of hard staring at, the young men both longed 
to beat a retreat. 

Each dreaded lest some whisper from these evidently 
well-informed people should reach her ear, and break her hap- 
piness for ever ; and for the first time Doune realized how 
terrible was the risk Mr. Eyre had run in exposing her to 
the fchances of a London season. For long ago Doune had 


E YKE'S ACQUITTAL. 


*39 


heard the story of his mother’s death, and one day had sought 
his father, and, with flaming eyes, said, — 

“ They say you killed my mother. Did you ? ” 

That interview made father and son firmer friends than 
before ; but this boy, who went through all his agony without 
a sign to her, trembled for Madcap when she should come to 
the same bitter knowledge as himself. 

“It is unbearably hot,” he said to his sister, after some 
half-dozen turns, in which Madcap had been admired, criti- 
cized, and envied more than any other woman in the Park. 

“ Hot ? ” said Madcap, looking up to the scantily-clothed 
trees overhead, through which the April sun could not shine 
hard enough to excuse that fine lady’s freak, a parasol. “ It 
is perfectly delightful ; and father will be waiting for us be- 
side Apollo presently.” 

“ He won’t come,’’’ said Doune, moodily, as he turned once 
more to see Madcap run the gauntlet of looked and whispered 
comment ; but was forced to smooth his brow, as just then 
they met Mr. Eyre’s Duchess, looking as beautiful in her 
morning gown as only a woman can who abhors cosmetics 
and has stood by her own heart (though, mickle dole, much 
pain it had taught her) for nigh upon a score of years. 

Yet at seven-and-thirty she might have tempted almost 
any man save Mr. Eyre, for love had winnowed her nature, 
leaving only that better part which writes its mark on a wom- 
an’s brow and lips for aye ; and if she looked at the younger 
Madcap coldly, seeing her her rival as surely as the older one 
had been, there was more heart in the look than there had 
been eighteen years ago. 

“ Father will be here presently,” said Madcap, uncon- 
sciously admitting the affinity she found between the two 
middle-aged friends ; “and there’s your Nancy !” she added 
in a sly aside to Gordon, who looked as broken-backed and 
wretched as any other w r ell-bred young man bound to appear 
in public as dance. 

But Nancy, humbly escorted, would not look a second 
time at her rival so proudly panoplied, and passed on, but 
not before Gordon had caught the jealous flush on a cheek 
almost as lovely as Madcap’s. 

The two had been friends all their lives, and he quick- 
ened his step to join her, at which Madcap, though looking a 
little astonished, said, “ How I wish he would fall in love 
with her ! ” 

“They would make a handsome pair,” said the Duchess, 


140 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


who had one fixed idea — that when Mr. Eyre was robbed ot 
this second Madcap he might possibly seek consolation where 
assuredly it would not be denied him. 

“ There he is ! ” cried the girl, a minute or two later ; 
and the Duchess thought no lovers could have moved more 
quickly at sight of each other than did this father and daugh- 
ter at Apollo’s feet, Madcap crying out, 

“ Have you found him ? ” 

He looked cross and vexed at the question, then beyond 
her at the Duchess, and went forward, and was never more 
fascinating' and polished than in the ten minutes’ walk that 
left the three young people to follow as they chose behind 
them. 

“ And have you fallen in love with Miss Nancy?” said 
Madcap, half an hour later to Gordon ; and she is so pret- 
ty, and so in love with you ! ” 

She had skirmished off to the library before the longing 
to kiss or box her ears had left him ; but her high spirits 
went out suddenly at sight of her father sitting grim and si- 
lent at his table, with that vexed look that always strikes so 
sad and unfamiliar on young eyes. 

“ Dad,” she said timidly, as she stole up behind him and 
ventured to draw his head to her shoulder, “ has any one vexed 
you to-day — have you been disappointed ? ” 

The gentle touch, the loving voice, moved him almost as 
potently as his wife’s had done when one of his dark fits over- 
came him ; and surely this child was his own, not Gordon’s 
yet, of any other man’s. 

But he did not say what his disappointment had been as 
he kissed her, nor for many weeks did she again hear the 
name of Major Methuen from her father’s lips. 


CHAPTER IV. 

Three times, in the course of nearly as many months, 
Madcap had seen Major Methuen afar off ; twice from the 
top of Gordon’s coach, and once on foot at Bushey Park, 
though the trees seemed to swallow him up as she gazed ; but 
never at a ball or dinner ; never under a friend’s roof, or any 
place where the world and his wife might be expected. But 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


141 


Mr. Eyre had not been so fortunate ; for though he had called 
so persistently at Mrs. Methuen’s house as to feel almost like 
a beggar who haunts a doorstep, the answer was always the 
same; Major Methuen was invariably “out.” 

By the way of variation, he was sometimes out of town, 
and his return indefinite, or he had just come in and just gone 
out again ; though the miracle of it was, that no one ever met 
him abroad, while he had not showed at his club for months. 

Mr. Eyre at first attributed this avoidance of him to the 
man’s well-known aversion to any sort of society, and also the 
dislike he was known to entertain to any friends of* the late 
Lord Love! ; but when even his letters .were disregarded, Mr. 
Eyre began to suspect that there was some secret here and 
became the more resolute in his advance as the other re- 
treated. Could it be possible that in dying Frank Lovel had 
dropped some words that Methuen had picked up ; that this 
doppelganger actually held the clue that Mr. Eyre believed to 
have been lost with Frank ? 

Yet he could have sworn that was Frank himself whose 
eyes had met his ; and at night and odd times strange thoughts 
would come into Mr. Eyre’s mind, and his mind was rapidly 
passing into that seething, restless state which in every in- 
stance had betokened with him disaster. He withdrew himself 
as much as possible from politics, and even avoided the so- 
ciety of every one save Madcap, who had lost some of her 
brightness as the season advanced, yet for some curious 
reason did not once urge her father to leave town. 

Surely, never had a chit of a country girl such a season 
before, said the women who envied her, and rejoiced to see 
her cheek pale (though men seemed to find a new loveliness in 
it), and hoped she smarted inwardly from some heart-wound 
that even her ten thousand a year was not able to cure. One 
thing was very clear, that she never missed an opportunity 
of throwing Nancy Lovel and her cousin together, to Doune’s 
secret dissatisfaction, though his love for Madcap would not 
let him own it. 

The two girls had somehow become friends, and were to 
be seen everywhere together ; but while Madcap was happy 
in thinking the cousins were falling in love with each other. 
Miss Nanciebel’s heart tarried behind with the brother and 
sister, who followed, and only the blindness of a fixed idea 
could have kept enlightenment from the girl who in this in- 
stance was emphatically her own father’s daughter. 

She thought Doune’s carelessness about the House, his 


142 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL . 


dislike to talk of that career into which he had formerly thrown 
himself, arose from a feeling of neglect towards herself, and 
many a happy hour between him and Nanciebel had she 

Twinn’d of its sweet life, 

in her eagerness to give Gordon and his cousin time in which 
to arrive at some pleasant understanding. 

Those who had watched Doune’s brilliant youth said that 
the young man was falling off lamentably from his high ambi- 
tions, an$ pointed to his daily pleasuring as a dishonor to 
those intellectual gifts that, properly developed, should be of 
some service to his country. But perhaps in discovering that 
a young woman in a long gown may be as sweet, fresh, and 
lovable as a child in a short one, Doune had included more 
than his sister, was unconsciously making his choice between 
the good of love, the evil of ambition, till one fine day all his 
honors and all his brilliant hopes faded before the answer of 
a pair of blue eyes that had grown shy of meeting his, but in 
which he might find that happiness which had made his father 
dead to ambition through over a score of years. 

Was he not choosing “ the better part ” ? His deathbed 
some day would answer that question. Nanciebel acquiesced 
in Madcap’s whim, but reserved to herself the right of listen- 
ing for Doune’s footsteps by day and dreaming of him by 
night. She was lovely as Madcap in her own style, and had 
long ago forgotten the childish fancy for her cousin that had 
made her dislike Madcap at first sight. 

The two girls talked of gowns and chiffons , but never of 
hearts ; so that the whole quartette were at odds. Gordon 
prosed to Nancy of Madcap, Nancy knew that Doune half 
suspected her of an attachment to Gordon, while Madcap be- 
lieved Gordon to have been judiciously detached from herself 
to his cousin ; and Doune, for the first time in his life, found 
his sister as aggravating as the loveliest woman on earth can 
be when by accident she finds herself in the place of a much- 
coveted somebody else. Lady Ann looked on with satisfac- 
tion, reading little between the lines, and satisfied to see two 
pair of lovers where before there was only one. 

One morning in late June, Gordon read out at breakfast 
the announcement of Mrs. Methuen’s death, the preceding 
day but one, and Madcap trembled ; but no one looked at her 
as Mr. Eyre, starting up and exclaiming, “ He cannot be out 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. i 43 

this time ! ” — left the room and, almost immediately after, the 
house. 

“ Poor chap ; he’ll be more cracked than ever now,” said 
Gordon, cheerfully ; “ but what on earth can he mean by 
dodging the father these three months ? ” 

Doune had walked to the window, and stood looking after 
him ; and for the first time it struck Madcap how haggard he 
looked, how restless in his movements, reminding her of those 
dangerous days in his youth when brain had overmastered 
body, and he had slipped towards those shadowy boundaries 
that divide reason from madness 

She went to him at once and said, — 

“Go^for a blow on the river to-day, dear. Lady Ann 
and I have only a rose-show this afternoon ; and Nancy can’t 
come with us,” she added, turning to Gordon, “ so you can 
go too, and take care of Doune ! ” 

But, curiously enough, it was Doune who was willing, 
Gordon who kicked against the pricks at going ; yet even then 
Madcap got no enlightenment, and when they were gone sate 
down quietly in Mr. Eyre’s study to await his return. 

How hard the thorn of deceit pricked her heart as she 
sate there, and thought of the useless quest upon which her 
father had gone . . . why had she not said to him long 
ago, “ He is your enemy,” and alas ! alas ! was not the rea- 
son of her holding back the fact that she could not add, 
“ and your enemy is mine ? ” 

Not a man had attracted her heart or fancy through all 
the perilous chances of such a season as a fairy Princess 
might have bestowed on her godchild, not a lover who could 
tempt her to lift her eyes so high as to see his charms or 
failings, for at the root of all her coldness lay the old reason, 
and “ But not like my Beverley l ” was her unconscious 
thought, as one after another her suitors (some for pure love’s 
sake, some for greed, but all seeking her with the more zest 
knowing her to be forbidden fruit) failed to efface an image 
graven on her heart over two years ago. 

Long ago she had forgiven his injustice to her father, for 
the root of it had been loyalty to his friend Lord Lovel, and 
however Frank' might have misunderstood Mr. Eyre, he was 
her hero still, and her sense of faithfulness could appreciate 
even an abuse of such partisanship ; but her hope of a good 
understanding between Major Methuen and her father had 
dwindled and waned with the season, and the good-by at the 
cowslip gate had come to sound in her ears like a farewell 


144 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


spoken from a deathbed. Once she blushed and covered 
her face with her hands, and then she sighed, because she 
dared not cry ; and in the midst of her thoughts Mr. Eyre 
came in, his brow more dark with anger than she had ever 
seen it. 

“ The man is out , as usual/’ he said : “ and his mother’s 
remains are already removed to the country for burial, says 
the varlet who has shut the door fifty times in my face, and 
his master sets out for abroad almost immediately But, by 
Heaven, I’ll bring him to book before he leaves. If Frank 
escaped me — if others have defied me, this man shall not.” 

But even as he spoke he felt the impotence of the will 
that had so frequently failed, and turned from Madcap with 
a gesture that startled her with its violence, as coming from 
so usually self-contained a man. 

She stood quite still, looking at him, and on the very 
verge of confessing the one deceit she had practised towards 
him ; and if she were betraying the faith Major Methuen had 
tacitly placed in her, what matter, so long as she soothed the 
storm in her father’s breast ? 

But he said, “ Leave me now/’ in a tone she dared not 
resist, and left him alone with his dark hour, his bitter 
thoughts, to dress herself to go to the rose-show with Lady 
Ann. 

As they turned out of Prince’s Gate, a man going past in 
a hansom caught a glimpse of the girl’s pure white face in 
the white setting of her carriage, and, with a desperate resolve, 
turned about and followed her, though she looked at many 
roses and spoke to many people before he got a chance of 
approaching her. 

But as she stood behind a tree of roses, Lady Ann being 
secure in the clutches of a gossip on the other side, she 
looked up and saw Major Methuen standing before her. 

Her heart leapt up, but her cheek was pale ; her hand 
never dreamed of going out to his. but as they stood there 
face to face the lesson that each had been learning apart 
these two years, the one unconsciously, the other with a full 
knowledge of what he learned, bore its fruit and all was over, 
all was said and done in the glance that they exchanged in 
that moment. 

“ I am going away forever,” he said, and, harsh as his 
voice was through pain it sounded sweet as music in her ears, 
“ and so — for the last time — good-by.” 

“ Must you go ? ” she said, withpale lips ; “ my father is 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


145 

ignorant of wrong against you — for his sake, for mine — stay.” 

If there was a moment’s pause that seemed an eternity ; 
if there was a time for the scent and hue of the roses by 
which they stood to sink deep into their souls, there might 
have seemed none to the onlookers ; but Madcap felt rather 
than heard, the deep breath he drew as he said, — 

“ I cannot — and so good-by.” 

Once he had been able to kiss her hand at parting but 
now with the look of a man whose heart breaks even as he 
gazes, but to which he will not yield, he turned aside without 
so much as touching it, and she could more easily have died 
than called him back then. 

“ Did I not see you conversing with some one, my dear ? ” 
said Lady Ann, appearing at her elbow as Madcap stood with 
fixed eyes that saw nothing. 

She answered nothing, only moved like an automaton ; 
but on going home, went straight to her father, who was 
still pacing the library, his looks betraying the disorder that 
ruled his mind. 

“Dad,” she said, “I must go home to-morrow — to-day — I 
shall go mad if I stay here much longer.” 

“ Ay, go,” he said, pausing in his walk, “ and I will follow 
you as soon as I have found this man. .Lady Ann will settle 
the affairs of the hopse, and the boys can follow later.” 

“ Thank you, father,” she said, but did not approach him, 
and sate alone with her heart for an hour before any other 
eye saw her that day. 

At luncheon the young men were staggered at the an- 
nouncement she made, Gordon vowing he would accompany 
her, Doune coloring violently and saying very little. 

•‘You have got your horses to get rid of,” cried Madcap 
to Gordon, “ and Doune will want days in which to pack up 
his books— and father is busy, and anybody who comes 
down for at least a week will get his ears boxed soundly ! ” 
and she ran out of the room to hide the tears in her eyes. 

Lady Ann thought things might have been worse, and, 
undertaking all Madcap’s responsibilities, broken engage- 
ments, leaving of cards, etc., including Nan (who had no idea 
of being hurried) went with Gordon next morning to set her 
out for Lovel. 

Just before the train Madcap kissed Gordon, and whis- 
pered something into his ear, at which he first colored violently 
then laughed, but as if the jest were a wry one. 


EYRE S ACQUITTAL. 


146 

“ What did she say ? ” said Lady Ann, curiously, as they 
drove away together. 

“ Begged me to go and propose to Nancy, because she 
was dying of love for me ! ” said Gordon, with a bitter laugh. 
“ Is she only joking — can’t she see that Doune and Nancy, 
adore one another ? ” 

“ She will know it soon,” said Lady Ann, her heart sink- 
ing for Gordon. “ I believe Doune has gone to propose to 
Nancy this morning. Perhaps Madcap is a little jealous, 
who knows ? ” 


CHAPTER V. 

Madcap had walked and talked with her heart three 
days, and it ached all the harder ; it cried out to her all the 
louder as its complaint grew, and her words could not still it, 
and the familiar old home only made her think of how happy 
her mother had been in it with a man more than twice her 
age. 

Had not her father wronged Lord Lovel when he snatched 
her from the young lover to whom she had vowed her love, 
and was not this Lancelot nobler in his love than Mr. Eyre 
had been, since he would not take love at the price of con- 
science ? 

Not once had she gone to the green hollow to which as a 
girl she had led him so gladly ; but to-day, with her father’s 
arrival expected, and the boys to follow on the morrow, she 
turned her steps to the place where unconsciously she had 
learned, and must unlearn, that bitter lesson of love that none 
but fools ever found sweet to its inmost core. 

Her eyes were downward bent, the old delights of wood- 
land gone, as mechanically she went her way, and climbed 
the hollow to her old velvet seat, only to find that it was 
filled. 

For a moment the gap between her thoughts of him in 
the spirit, and his presence in the flesh here was not to be 
bridged ; an awful joy, like an awful sorrow, numbs , and she 
had no power to speak : so that it was almost with a sense of 
relief that she felt rather than heard her father’s step behind 
her, while a cry burst from his lips of, — 


E YRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


147 


u Frank /’•’ 

At last the two were face to face; and Madcap shrank 
back, as a woman will, like tow before the scorching breath 
of men’s passions, as Mr. Eyre in the hollow, and the man 
she loved above, looked in each other’s faces, ever}' line dis- 
tinct in the broad June sunshine. 

“ Methuen ,” said the other, doggedly. 

“ You lie ! ” cried Mr. Eyre, with a gesture as though he 
could have struck him across the mouth. “ It has been a lie, 
a deception, from the beginning, and I find you here , a cow- 
ard to the last, and making for me traitors among even my 
own household ! ” 

“ Methuen, at your service,” said the man who stood at 
:he foot of the beech-tree, his face set like a flint, his eyes 
hard as steel. 

“ By God ! ” cried Mr. Eyre, “ either you or I shall not 
leave this wood alive to-day, unless I drag from your lips the 
truth.” 

“ If you have weapons with you,” said the other, “ you 
may murder me — but you shall not force me to speak.” 

“ Murder you ! ” said Mr. Eyre, and looking at the man 
above him with the bitterest hatred and loathing. “Have 
you not murdered me, body and soul ; have you not poisoned 
my life with a lie — written down a false accusation, and run 
away fearing to face it out or hear my reply ? To lie, to de- 
ceive, to suborn my very daughter, my only daughter, to take 
another man’s name and wear it, deceiving the doting old 
mother of a dead man — to act from first to last a hideous lie ; 
would murder be punishment enough for all this, coward, 
liar, traitor ? ” 

With the last word he deliberately struck the man before 
him a heavy blow- on the mouth, and as the blood sprang 
Madcap trembled with that pure. feminine sickening at the 
sight of men in conflict, and ran forward, crying out 
“ Father ! ” 

“ You here ? ” he said, and turned on her a. look be- 
neatfi which her mother (had she seen it) would have cow- 
ered ; “ get you home, and pray God to make you more like 
your mother.” 

“ She is dead ! ” said the girl, pale as snow, “ and my 
place is by you. It is all a mistake, and it is Major Methuen 
who stands there.” 

She did not, could not lift her eyes to the man who had 
taken the blow so tamely ; but Mr. Eyre thrust her away 


EYRE’S ACQU/TTAL. 


148 

violently, and said, “ Home with you — home ! ” and with a 
sob as though he had beaten her, she turned and fled with 
one backward look ; till her foot catching in the root of a 
tree, she fell against its bole and lay stunned; though 
whether for a moment or an hour she did not know'. When 
she came to herself and looked around, she was far out of 
earshot, but within sight of the two men, who now stood in 
the green hollow that had so long been her peaceful retreat ; 
but from their gestures, however controlled, expounded the 
heart tragedy in process of being enacted. . . . Here was 
one of those awful scenes over which the pen falters, the 
brush fails, for only human voice and eye could adequately 
describe and see it ; but out of its prolonged agony Mr. 
Eyre came forth victorious, and having torn the truth bit by 
bit from his enemy, his features 

“ Dim and dank and gray, 

Like a storm-extinguished day 
Travelled o’er by dying gleams ”... 

He moved blindly, and with uncertain steps, towards home ; 
but had not gone a score when his daughter’s arms caught 
him, and he looked at her as one might at the long-forgotten 
dead ... in the awful wrong he had done her mother, the 
girl’s wrong-doing was extinguished ; and he did not even re- 
member his anger against her as they went a few steps along 
the way that with only anxious, not hopeless, hearts, they 
had traversed such a short time ago. 

“ Child,” he said, stopping abruptly,’ “ take your hand 
from mine — it is red with blood — the blood of your mother.” 

“ Father ! ” she said, struck to the soul, and for a second 
recoiling from him beneath this upheaval of her whole life. . . 

“ Ay — your father ,” he said, looking down at his hand ; 
“ for it seems a hand can work without will , knowledge, con- 
science — but Frank will tell you the whole story if you go to 
him.” 

“ Frcfttk ? ” she repeated ; then forgot the man whose 
name she uttered, as crying out “ Father— -father /” she. put 
her arms round that beloved figure. . . . Nothing that he 
might have done could touch the core of her allegiance, and 
a backward look of anger sped far as she led him away, and, 
with every step a pang, got him home to his library, where 
immediately (to her mingled relief and alarm) he fell into a 
sound sleep. 

For awhile she stood and looked at him ; but there was 


149 


f 

EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 

work to be done, and, calling Nan (with her eternal seam), 
installed her in the remotest corner of the library, with orders 
not to move till she returned ; then ran out with at once the 
quickest and heaviest feet that had ever carried her through 
the cowslip gate, to the hollow in which she prayed, as she 
went, to find the man whom, of all upon earth, she most de- 
sired to see. 

Long before she got within sight of it she felt that he was 
there, and was by his side before he had lifted himself from 
the attitude of despair into which he had fallen when Mr. 
Eyre left him. 

She could not see his face, which was to the tree ; but his 
open hand held behind his back fixed her attention, and, lean- 
ing forward, she saw how, on the inside of the thumb was a 
diamond-shaped scar. 

* The discovery gave her no shock. She was wholly pos- 
sessed now with her father’s state, and with no blush or 
thought of self, touched that hand and said, — 

“ Lord Lovel ! ” 

He turned and looked at her. Alas, alas ! how quickly 
had love’s bitter drowned in them both love’s sweet ! For 
he was paler than she, and so completely broken by the in- 
tense struggle of the past hour that scarcely could his man- 
hood command strength to look at her and stand still to await 
her questions. 

But the red mark on his cheek must have reminded her, 
if no inward thought had done, of her errand, and she said, 

“ You have tried to persuade my father that he killed my 
mother ; and he is ill, nervous — angry with you for the de- 
ception you have practised towards him. But do you not 
know that my mother died in childbirth ? ” 

“ She did,” said the man before her; “ and Mr. Eyre is 
ill and unnerved, as you say. Do not listen to him — to- 
morrow he will think and speak differently.” 

“ No,” cried Madcap ; “ I will have the truth — if you can 
speak it,” she added, with some side-thought of her own 
quarrel with him in her soul. 

Had ever a man two such deadly pieces of work, with 
scarce a breath between, as had this one as he looked on 
the girl, and felt this second ordeal more terrible than the 
first ? 

“ How collide be guilty ? ” she cried, passionately. “ You 
made a wild accusation ; but I know that you got a little 
touched in India, and so you have imagined things.” 


EYEE’S ACQUITTAL. 


* 5 ° 

“ So you are all that my father called you,” she said at 
last, as he maintained that stubborn silence, and she saw how 
the short hair on his temples was dark and wet with the dews 
of agony ; “ and all my life long I have been worshipping a 
hero only to find him something worse than a murderer — 
something that stabs in the dark and hides in the daylight — 
in one word, an assassin ! ” 

The terrible word sped like a blow as she advanced a 
step, and looking at him with eyes grown hard and cold in an 
hour, virtually denied her love, and sided with her father 
against him. 

• He made a step forward as if to leave her, but she stood 
before him with flaming eyes, fired by a resolution that would 
have made her go through a dozen scenes more terrible than 
this to save her father. 

“ His life is at stake,” she said ; “ I saw death in his face 
when I left him. Tell me on what grounds you base your 
awful accusation, that I may prove to him you are mad when 
I go back.” 

“ I am not mad,” he said, slowly ; “ but if it will do your 
father any good to think me so ” 

“ Palter, palter , subterfuge after subterfuge,” she cried in 
a passion of contempt ; “ do you think that I have not strength 
to hear what is killmg him ? ” 

“ It would kill you,” he said, “ and you are innocent — it is 
unnatural that you should suffer so — his is the sin, let his be 
the punishment.” 

“ The young die more easily than the old,” she said ; 
“ tell me the whole story, for I must go back to him direct- 
ly.” . . . 

To tell her the whole story . . . that story bf a sin which 
even angels might not utter without tears of horror and pity 
... it was beyond his strength ; and putting her aside almost 
as abruptly as her father had done, he was gone from her 
sight before she had time to stretch a hand or lift a voice to 
stay him. 


E YRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


I5 1 


CHAPTER VI. 

Madcap found the library sofa unoccupied, and no living 
soul in sight but Nan, whom she shook in the agony of her 
fear ; but Nan knew nothing of “ Master,” except that he had 
suddenly woke up and gone out on the instant, “ like one as 
walks in his sleep,” she added, stolidly, not knowing how in 
her stolid stupidity she had given a clue to the young mistress, 
who rushed away as on the wings of the wind. 

All down the village she sped, with her eager question of, 
“ Have you seen my father ? ” and having easily tracked him 
to Synge lane, rejoiced to see his back through the uncurtained 
window, in conversation, as she supposed, with his tenant. 

She drew in her breath, with a half sob, as she entered 
the open door, scarce knowing what she had dreaded in her 
delight at having found him, but paused on the very threshold 
of the room as certain words reached her ears, spoken in an 
unfamiliar voice. 

“ I came down here by chance to-day,” it said, “ to look 
at the Pool, and think of my sin — for I thought you were safe 
in town, and I never knew of Lord Lovel being here, and 
you had best not listen to him ” 

“ So 1 tracked the wrong woman to Paris,” said Mr. 
Kyre ; “ but now you and I are face to face — and if Frank 
Lovel thought he spoke the truth to me this afternoon, you 
shall substantiate it.” 

“ What could he tell you more than you know already ? ” 
said the woman’s voice, “ have not both he and I bound our- 
selves as exiles to save you ? Neither of us came back till 
we thought you absent or dead — and for your child’s sake — 
made in her image, we both willingly effaced ourselves 
again.” 

“ Good God ! ” cried Mr. Eyre, “ have you, too, taken 
leave of your senses — do you suppose that I murdered mv 
wife ? ” 

In the momentary pause that followed, the girl who 
kneeled without realized, without a word, the whole truth . . . 

“ I saw you kill her,” said the woman’s voice beyond. 
“ O ! Heavens ! if only 1 might have saved her . . . but I 


E YRE'S A CQ UITTAL. 


* 5 * 

was barely in time to see it, and the window was be- 
tween ” yr 

“ Liar / ” he cried ; “ say that you yourself committed tne 
crime, but must accuse me to the end — but, thank God, I 
have found you at my very gates after searching the world 
over, and you shall hang for her murder yet.” 

“ I would hang, willingly,” said the voice, “ for the sin is 
mine, and she never wronged me ; my wicked weakness was 
at the root of all, and perhaps you did well to slay her — she 
is happier as she is.” 

“ What ! you still persist in that horrible lie ? ” he cried 
in a voice of fury, “ the poisonous lie that drove Lord Lovel 
forth, that on his return you have instilled into his ear drop 
by drop, till his very soul is drugged with its untruth ? Be- 
fore my God I will swear that this right hand is innocent of 
her blood as ” 

“ Stay ! ” cried the voice ; “ do not perjure yourself so — 
these eyes saw that hand commit the crime, and to avoid 
giving evidence against you, I ran away, but was drawn back 
by my love for your child, and when you committed me for 
trial resolved that, if convicted, I would die silent .” 

“ Silent ? ” cried Mr. Eyre ; “ then how came Lord Lovel 
by his knowledge ? ” 

“ In your brain fever you revealed everything,” said the 
woman ; “ until then he believed me guilty — and I did not un- 
deceive him.” 

Mr. Eyre laughed aloud. “ Does a man in brain fever 
speak the truth ? ” he said, contemptuously ; “ and as to 
your eyes — who would trust them, with a knowledge of your 
antecedents ? The brain that could plan a murder, could 
easily enough plan a lie.” 

There was no answer, no sound of any kind but that of 
Mr. Eyre’s steps aS he paced to and fro about the narrow 
room ; but when those steps stopped Madcap’s heart seemed 
stopped also, as she waited for his next words. 

“ You have impressed your lie vividly enough upon Lord 
Lovel — tell it to me , and with some circumstantial detail, that 
I may the more readily appreciate it ” 

“Have yoM forgotten it ? ” cried the woman, with a passion 
4 of wonder in her voice ; “ how you came up the winding stair 
from tfye library, and, pausing at sight of the seated 
figure, snatched a knife from the open dressing-case, stabbed 
her savagely to the heart as she sate asleep by the window, 
before I could cry out ? You left her there for d^ad, and 


EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. 


*53 

thrust the knife away in a cabinet, and went downstairs as 
one who walks in his sleep, and I was frozen, and could not 
call out or stir ; but presently my senses came back, and I 
cried ‘ murder /’ hoping that she was not dead.” 

“ And the scrap of your clothing found caught to her 
chair — what of that ? ” said Mr. Eyre. 

“ I had forced my way through the narrow window ; I 
was feeling her heart, her pulse, when the light of your candle 
showed zigzag on the private stair, and at the same moment 
came the sound of hurrying feet ; some impulse made me 
snatch the knife from the cabinet in which I had seen you 
place it, and I escaped barely in time, only to be intercepted 
by Digges at its foot. I struggled with him and got away, 
stumbling on for miles till I thought myself safe from pursuit. 
But the child drew me back — suddenly it was borne in upon 
me that he was very ill, and in the dead of night I returned 
to find him dying in Lord Lovel’s arms. But he died in mine 
— thank God for that — my little love, my angel ; and as he 
lay dead upon my knees you entered with the officers of the 
law, and ordered them to take me to prison, charged with the 
murder I had seen you commit.” 

Mr. Eyre suddenly burst out into a fit of violent, shocking 
laughter, that revealed his state of incipient madness more 
clearly than a thousand other extravagances could have done. 

“ So that is the story into which you have persuaded 
Frank Lovel,” he said. “ This is the tissue of lies that you 
have taken seventeen years to build up ; but a judge and 
jury will find out these, for to-morrow morning I will give my- 
self up to justice, on your evidence, as the murderer of my 
wife.” 

“ No, no ! ” cried Hester, passionately. “ You have 
forced — wrung the truth from me ; but for her sake — for the 
sake of the vow I made to her the day before she died, I 
would hang for your crime rather than publicly accuse you of 
it!” 

“ No,” said Mr. Eyre, “ you would only slay my soul, as 
my friend has done ; but each syllable that you and he have 
spoken to-day shall be sifted in a court of law ; for by the God 
against whom I have sinned, I swear that this hand is 
innocent of my wife’s blood ! ” 

In the awful silence that followed , Madcap’s heart seemed 
to cease to beat, and the very life-blood to ebb from her veins. 
Then came the sound of a woman’s sob — hard, anguished ; as 
the last hopeless cry of a profound despair. 


r 54 


E YKE'S A CQ UITTA L. 


“ Ay, weep if you can,” said Mr. Eyre, in a terrible voice. 
“ You, who destroyed the happiness, took the life of the sweet- 
est soul God ever made ; for if your ha?id hesitated to slay 
her, your deeds stood fast to break her heart, and but for 
you she would be living now. 

“ I know it,” said Hester, in a voice scarcely less un- 
natural than his. “ It was my sin, my weakness, that brought 
about the whole tragedy from first to last ; and that’s why 1 
let you accuse me falsely ; that’s why I would have died 
without speaking if they had brought me in guilty at the 
trial — for her sake and Dody’s ; and because she loved 
you . . . and it was the only way I could make it up to 
her . . . though she’s happy now, for she has got him ”... 

The woman’s voice broke and became human, tears 
came and relieved her ; but Mr. Eyre, dry-eyed, incredulous, 
yet shaken to the very centre of his being, laughed again as 
lie looked at her. 

“ You and my Lord Lovel have managed it very well 
between you,” he said : “ you must have had many interviews 
to dovetail your stories 'so circumstantially ; but I find more 
than one flaw in your ingenious narrative — though the best 
legal talent in England will discover them without my help 
before I am a week older.” 

‘‘Yes,” said Hester, “Lord Lovel and I have managed 
well , as you say. What he learned, he learned from your 
lips alone in your delirium — then we combined, and decided 
on your account to live as exiles.” 

“ Say on your own” cried Mr. Eyre, furiously, as one 
whose endurance fails him ; “ a pair of traitors who deserve 
to die a hundred deaths to avenge, her one ; but this time 
you shall not escape me ” — and he strode to the door, and 
was about to call to the woman of the house, when he 
stumbled over Madcap’s body as she kneeled with her brow 
to the lintel, pale and with the look of death imprinted on 
her face. 

He stooped to lift her, and carried her in . . . if he could 
have uttered sob or cry, as Hester had done but now, his 
reason might have been saved ; but grim and silent he sate 
down with his burden, and only looked at her ; . . . here was 
his punishment ; here in the suffering of this innocent soul 
he found the chastisement that he had impiously denied his 
Maker, and in that moment ( though unconsciously to him- 
self) the core of his heart became human ; and as a child 
who bows to the rod, so bowed he then to the hand of God. 


E YRKS ACQUITTAL. 


'C 1 

155 

# Hester had drawn near ... nor years, nor loss, nor an- 
guish could stifle in her that throb of motherhood that had 
governed the greater part of her life ; and in this pale, still 
shape she seemed to see once more the Madcap whose life 
she had cut short by her sin . . . seemed to see chances of 
redemption even thus late in the day, though she might now 
do no more than kneel to kiss the pale hand that hung down, 
and which Mr. Eyre instantly snatched away, as if the woman’s 
touch were pollution. 

Madcap opened her eyes on the instant, blaming herself 
for lack of courage ; and meeting Hester’s gaze, and reading 
its perfect truth, sealed one of those silent compacts that be- 
tween true and generous souls are seldom broken, then took 
her father’s hand and said, — 

“ Dad, take me home. ” 

The familiar epithet used through all the seventeen years 
of her beautiful childhood’s love and trust in him, moved Mr. 
Eyre naturally and profoundly ... for a moment his iron 
features relaxed, but the next he put her aside and turned to 
Hester. 

“ You will consider yourself under arrest, ” he said ; 
“ and until I can secure assistance I will myself remain to 
watch you. And now, child, if you are able, get home with 
you ; and since this confounded woman of the house seems 
to be absent, send down some people from the Hall. ” 

Disobedience had never been bred in Madcap’s nature, 
but fot a moment she paused, and thought deeply ; then, with 
a gesture to Hester that Mr. Eyre did not see, went out, only 
to meet, on the threshold of the open door, Lord Lovel. 

“ I was going to look for you, ” she said, without a thought 
of self, and as a soul might speak who has lost its body ; 
“ there is some frightful mistake here ... for she speaks the 
truth, and so does my father ; and between them ” 

“ So here are more secrets, ” said Mr. Eyre’s voice behind 
them ; and his glance fell cold as ice on his daughter “ There 
seems to be a conspiracy among you ; but a man is mostly 
betrayed by his nearest and dearest. And here is my tenant, ” 
he added, as a woman came up the narrow garden, exhausted 
by the unusual business of a day spent in Marmiton, no more 
expecting thieves than debtors at the humble house that was 
left on the latch morning, noon and night. 

Madcap stood between the two men whom she loved best 
upon earth, her heart torn between them, now espousing this 
sidtf, 1 noW th'dt. but, firm in faithfulness to her father, whom 


! S 6 £ YfiE’S A CQ UITTAL. 

she was resolved to save, though how was a question of the 
future. 

“ Your servant, Miss,” said the woman, curtseying low to 
Madcap and coldly to Mr. Eyre. “I left my house empty, 
but I find it full ” — and she turned a curious look on Lord 
Lovel as at a stranger whose features she desired to learn, 
then, as recognition broke on her, ran forward crying, — 

“ And have you come back, my Lord, at last ? ” “ He 

had better have stayed away,” said Mr. Eyre ; “ but mind 
you, the woman in that room yonder is a prisoner , and you 
will look to it that she does not escape.” 

“ And the charge against her, sir ? ” said the mistress of 
the house, coldly. 

“ False accusation and bearing of false witness,” said 
Mr. Eyre, grimly ; “ but you are in her pay and not to be 
trusted. And so you must go home, Madcap,” he added, as 
he drew out his pocket-book, “ and send a servant off on 
horseback at once with these instructions” — and he wrote 
them down with a firm hand and gave her the torn-out leaf 
without a tremor. 

She took it as calmly as he gave it, not knowing whence 
came the reserves of strength that enabled'her to meet this 
fearful hour ; but, looking at him as she turned away, saw a 
sudden, terrible change in his face, and was barely in time to 
catch him as he fell, swaying slowly as some mighty mon- 
arch of the woods that quivers as with a mortal agony ere it 
crashes slowly to the e^rth. 

But Madcap was young and strong to love and save, and 
she neither sobbed nor cried out as, with Frank’s help, they 
two bore that beloved body up, the one his head and the 
other his feet, and carried him in and laid him down where 
he seemed to lie in a deep slumber, that was neither a natural 
one nor yet a swoon or stupor. But to Madcap’s mind a 
sentence of Hester Clarke’s was working to the exclusion of 
e^ety.bther thought or outward impression : “ He went down - 
stairs as one who walks in his sleep?' . . Madcap drew her 
.hand from her eyes to J see Frank standing near looking at 
her earnestly. 

' ; “ Leave me now,” she said. “ There is something that I 
must think out. I must save him. But do not go away 
from the house, for you must help me to get him home pres- 
ently.” 

He went without a word — what could any human being 

do for her in such an hour as this ? ” She drew down the 

.non / • ' ' 


£ YRE'S A CQ UITTAL . 


*57 

thick green blind to shut out the broad June sunshine, and 
seated herself in the twilight thus made near the window, un- 
consciously occupying the same chair, and in the same atti- 
tude, as Hester Clarke had filled on a certain fatal night, 
over seventeen years ago. 

“ As one who walks in his sleep ” . . . and from childhood 
Doune, who in mind and body was Mr. Eyre’s younger re- 
plica, had walked in his, and had once startled his sister by 
coming to her room at midnight, light in hand, and, sitting 
down at her table, read from a favorite book till dawn, when 
replacing the volume, he went away, though next morning he 
recollected nothing of the occurrence, and declared she had 
been dreaming. 

Had Mr. Eyre murdered her mother in his sleep , and was 
this the explanation of the utter irreconcilability of Mr. Eyre’s 
oath of innocence, and the convincing proofs that Hester 
Clarke’s evidence and Lord Lovel’s self-banishment gave of 
his guilt ? 

Each told truth so far as he knew it. Hester had seen 
"it; Mr. Eyre denied it ; and this girl’s clear, logical brain, 
bent wholly to the riddle, seemed suddenly to have solved 
it ; but to prove it — was this within the scope of even a daugh- 
ter’s love ? 

She bowed her head upon her hands, and prayed for a 
sign ; and even as she prayed it came, for Mr. Eyre, waking 
suddenly and seeing that seated white figure in the gloom be- 
yond advanced towards it with fury, and lifted his hand vio- 
lently as if in act to strike it. 

But as she looked up and he saw the features of wife and 
daughter in one, he stepped back, for he had found the lost 
link in his memory that had escaped him seventeen years . . 

. he had desired to kill Hester, and he had killed ... no, 
no ! it was impossible ; yet this last accident had determined 
the course of his already unsettled reason, and before Mad- 
cap could reach him he had opened the door, and was gone. 

There was a short cut from Synge Lane to the Hall, and 
this he took, while Madcap followed at a distance, dreading 
to startle him, yet nourishing in her heart a clue to wha 
might be his redemption . . . and behind her again camt 
Frank, while in the cottage the two women clung together as 
straws caught in the eddy of a whirlpool. Frank watched 
father and daughter into the Red Hall, and all that summer 
evening he waited without hidden, but within call, though 


I5 g EYRE’S ACQUITl'AL. 

overpowered with sleep in early morning, lay down in his am- 
bush, not knowing how in the darkest hours of the night, to 
Madcap light had come. 


CHAPTER VII. 

Mr. Eyre locked himself in his study on his return, and 
though he had not tasted food since his arrival at noon, none 
durst disturb him — not even Madcap, who forced herself to 
eat, having on hand d night’s work that would require almost 
superhuman Courage and strength. 

' How do inspiratioris, desperate resolves come into a 
human soul ? Are they born of need, agony, or prayer ? 
But to Madcap a Divine message seemed to have come, as, 
while the household sank to rest, she kneeled in the darkness 
outside the door of her mother’s room, waiting for the mo- 
ment to arrive when her daring experiment should be put 
into practice. 

The door was locked against her ; Mr. Eyre’s hand had 
turned the key when, two hours ago, he had ascended by the 
private staircase and approached that cabinet about which 
for seventeen years his brain had held some secret knowl- 
edge that defied. 

Madcap heard him open a drawer, and then followed a 
long and profound silence, in which, for the last time, the 
one half of his brain struggled with the other, and as he had 
wrung the truth from Lord Lovel and Hester that day, so 
now he forced the lock of that sealed chamber which had 
defied him, and saw. All was clear to him now — the seated 
figure by the window in Synge Lane that he had desired to kill 
was Hester, the figure that he had actually killed in a fit of 
madness of which he had no memory was his wife, and he 
had put the knife back in the cabinet as the woman described 
. . . he remembered now that the cry for help that night had 
aroused him from a dream of appalling vividness in which 
he was in the act of stabbing Hester to the heart, and how 
he was possessed of a passionate feeling of exultation that 
he was rid of her, and that his wife’s happiness was now 
secure. 

A diessing-noom communicated with Mr. Eyre’s bedroom* 


E YftE’S A CQ UITTA L, 


£59 

the outer door of which was always kept locked and the key 
withdrawn, and this key had been in her hand during the 
past hours, when, frozen even in the midsummer heat, she 
had waited without, and she shivered as the key turned 
harshly and she went in. 

She locked the door behind her, opened the next, and in 
the dim, faint light that came through the window seated her- 
self in her mother’s chair, and with a prayer on her lips closed 
her eyes and waited. Half an hour passed, an hour — she 
grew colder and colder in her thin white gown, and hope be- 
gan to leave her; butijat last she saw the zigzag light of a 
candle showing on the corkscrew staircase, and her father 
entered, the light wavering over his fixed face and wide- 
opened eyes — O ! Heavens ! in his sleep ! Almost aloud she 
prayed it, as at sight of her he stopped short, then advanced 
with violence towards her, feeling in his breast as for a wea- 
pon ; then, turning as by remembered instinct to the cabinet 
near, opened a drawer, in imagination, snatched a knife, and 
stabbed at her, once, twice* exclaiming, — 

“ Die, die ! ” in a voice of fury. Then, making as though 
he replaced the weapon, turned, and went down the staircase, 
holding the light steadily, and with no sign of either hurry or 
discomposure on his features. 

She followed him down, love’s work being not completed 
yet, and saw him seat himself at the table, but when, trem- 
bling, she stole nearer she saw by his wide-opened fixed eyes 
that he was still asleep, though his folded arms rested on the 
edges of a large book that he had opened and set before him. 

Then Madcap sank down beside him, knowing that her 
prayer had been granted, and that love’s miracle had saved 
him .... then sight and sense failed her, and she fell for- 
ward with her bright hair veiling her face as her head sank 
forward on his knee. 

****** 

Madcap came out of that long swoon like a soldier who 
has lain down to sleep at the post of duty, for the room was 
empty, the fresh morning wind blew in through the open win- 
dow, and on the table before her there lay a sealed letter ad- 
dressed to herself. Mr. Eyre had wrapped his cloak about 
her, and placed a pillow beneath her head, and she noticed 
these signs of love as she tore open the letter, and in Mr. 
Eyre’s firm handwriting read the following : 

« Madcap— child— beloved daughter— by the time you 


166 


E YRE'S A CQU/TTAL. 


receive this I shall have delivered myself up to justice for the 
murder of your mother. In heart and hand I am guilty, and 
will suffer for it in due course. She has forgiven me — per- 
haps in time you, who have been the joy of my life, the light 
of my eyes, my good and most faithful daughter, you who in 
the two darkest hours of my life have come to me, and per- 
chance love me still, in time may learn to forgive your most 
unhappy guilty father. D. H. Eyre.” 

Madcap kissed the letter as she laid it in her breast, never 
had she loved her father so deeply as in that moment .... 

“ O ! Dad . . Dad ” . . she cried aloud, with a sob in her voice 
as she fled upstairs to the room where Nan stood gazing in 
wonder at the unslept-in bed of her mistress. “ Order me 
some coffee, Nan,” cried the girl, “ quickly; then comeback 
and dress me, for I must go out directly.’” And she began 
to strip off the tumbled white gown she had worn throughout 
that dreadful yet most blessed night. 

“ Give me one of my freshest dresses out, Nan,” cried 
Madcap, eagerly ; “ For I am going to save some one — to 
carry good news, Nan — and he likes me to look well — and 
tell them to have Tommy round in five minutes — but some- 
one must drive me,” she added, looking down at the hands 
that trembled so she could not fasten the lace at her throat. 
“ And you will have breakfast ready by nine o’clock, for father 
will come back with me, and he will be . . . hungry.” 

“ Master Gordon arrived at the Towers last night,” said 
Nan, in an aggrieved tone; “but Saunders wouldn’t let him 
come in — and what’s come to your hair, Miss Madcap?” 
added the woman, staring ; “ there’s a long thick piece cut 

right away from the side ” 

“ There’s plenty left,” said Madcap, feverishly, as she 
tried to swallow some coffee. “ Is not that Tommy ? ” and 
she ran out of the room, putting on her hat and gloves as she 
went. 

* * # * 

Meanwhile an extraordinary scene was being enacted at 
Marmiton Jail. At eight o’clock Mr. Eyre had walked in and 
given himself in custody for the murder of his wife : and be- 
fore the dreadful confession had properly reached the brain 
of the governor, who imagined Mr. Eyre to have suddenly 
gone mad, named Hester Clarke as witness to the deed, and 
Lord Lovel as being well acquainted with the fact. 

The man was at first stupefied ; but Mr. Eyre persisting 


E YRE'S A CQ UITTAL , , $ , 

in his story, and showing no other signs of madness, in less 
than an hour his brother Justices were summoned, and a 
scene of the utmost confusion among them prevailed. He 
alone was calm, and before being conducted to a cell, asked 
that no one might be admitted to him, especially his daughter 
— and as he named her the first sign of emotion he had yet 
shown crossed his features. To Lord Lovel, who was present, 
and who vainly implored him to withdraw his self-accusation, 
he said he was resolved on doing his duty, and hoped Frank 
would do his, and make Hester Clarke do hers, that though 
he had disbelieved their story yesterday, in the night he had 
becortie convinced of its truth. 

He added that Lord LovePs knowledge of it had exiled 
him, and no doubt was the reason of his acquiescence in the 
case of mistaken identity by which Major Methuen had been 
buried under his name, and many living persons persuaded 
that Lord Lovel, not the other, had died. 

“ Mrs. Methuen knew the truth from the first,” said 
Lord Lovel : and Gordon, who now came in, appalled at the 
news that had met him on his return from an early ride, was 
barely in time to see Mr. Eyre leave the room, without any 
further look or word to those present. 

Madcap saw only scared faces as she drove through the 
village in her fresh gown, and with a look of happiness, for all 
her intense pallor ; and though many a hand was half 
stretched out to check her, none durst speak as she went 
quickly by, reaching the jail a few moments after Mr. Eyre 
had left the governor’s room. 

They all made way for her as she came in ; and not look- 
ing at Gordon any more than at Frank, nor seeing clearly 
any of their faces in the longing to see her father’s ; in plain 
truthful words told how her father had indeed murdered her 
mother, though for seventeen years he was unconscious of it, 
for that he had killed her in his sleep. 

She detailed the events of the preceding night, and said 
that no doubt there would be future opportunities of testing 
the truth of what she said, then asked to be taken to him, 
that she might tell him the truth. 

Colonel Busby, who, for the first time in his life, was by 
amazement (not at Mr. Eyre’s guilt, but as to the manner of 
the crime) rendered almost incapable of speech, opposed 
her going to the cell: but Lord Lovel approached to lead 
her there, and as she put her hand in his, and as Frank, as her 
hero, as the man who had so nobly sacrificed himself to her 


! 6 2 E YRE'S A CQ UITTA L. 

father, she saw him, so in that moment Gordon learned the 
truth, and in the moment in which he lost the title he had 
never valued, knew that he had lost — Madcap. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

“ Perchance and so thou purify thy soul, 

And so thou lean on our fair father, Christ, 

Hereafter in that world where all are pure, 

We two may meet before High God, and thou 
Wilt spring tome and claim me Thine.” 

It was not Mr. Eyre’s lot to be brought before any earthly 
tribunal more terrible than his own heart ; for in a very few 
days he had answered to a higher one, and the weird that 
it had taken twenty years to dree, was at last spun out to its 
bitter end. 

He had got his death-blow on the night that he discov- 
ered his guilt, and from that moment withered rapidly, not 
even the love of his devoted child, seeming to have power to 
check the haste with which he was hurrying to meet his wife. 
The springs of life seeming to fail him suddenly, so that all 
went out together, as mercifully perhaps for Madcap as for 
himself. 

There had been no pretence even of his trial, and one 
day he was carried back to the Red Hall, where he lay till 
he died, with either Madcap or Frank always beside him. 

Doune's grief and anguish, following so swiftly on the joy 
that Nancy’s confession of love had brought him, rendered 
him unfit for his father’s presence ; he could not control it 
as his sister did, or think of the long hereafter in whrch .there 
would be time enough to mourn, while Gordon remained only 
in hopes of being of some assistance, meanwhile busying 
himself with arrangements for almost immediately going 
abroad. 

In those last short days, the heart of the proud man at last 
found his Maker, and one of the truest signs of his repent- 
ance was when he sent for Hester and asked her to forgive 

him. 

As her burning tears fell on the hand she kissed, knowing 
how she had wronged and misunderstood him, her awful re- 


E YRE'S A CQ CJITTAL. 


163 

pentance for her sin outweighed his, and in the last look, the 
last words, for the first time these two erring souls under 
stood one another. 

His brain was perfectly clear, and he set his estate in 
order, and destroyed old letters, but gave into his daughter’s 
hand a little packet that he desired her to bury with him. 
They were his sweetheart’s love-letters — the only sweetheart 
of his life ; and then he seemed to give himself no more con- 
cern about business, but went one afternoon to the bed 
whence he did not rise again. 

That night he spoke of his little son Dody, who had died 
within a few days of his mother, and slept sound and sweet 
these seventeen years and more in her arms. 

“ I shall see him soon,” he said. “ I wonder if he will 
remember that I was unkind to him. Perhaps she has 
taught him to forgive me ; and you always loved him, Frank, 
and he you. I’ve never asked your forgiveness, though I 
think she has ; and I’ve left you another Madcap, my good, 
faithful child.” . . . 

He sank into a slumber even as he spoke, and did not 
wake till morning ; then opened his eyes suddenly to see the 
two who stood beside him. 

“ Light* he said ; “ what is that verse of yours, child, 
I have so often heard you sing ? So many things seem to 
have sunk into my soul lately without my knowledge.” . . . 

Madcap drew in her breath, as sh.e repeated the words, 
but as she came to 

“ Those angel voices I have lost erewhile,” 

across Mr. Eyre’s face flashed a look of light — ay, and more 
light . . . perchance enough to light his soul to his lost Mad- 
cap, as, stretching out his arms to his child, he passed away 
to that last tribunal where, by the grace of God, he may 
have found forgiveness for his sins. 


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Yours, in the bonds, JAY GOULD. 


. Windsor Castle. 

Victoria, Queen of Great Britain, Emp~ess of India, and admirer of Erratic 
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ness and enabled her to resume an kueesy life. 


91 


[TELEGRAM FROM BENJAMIN B.] 

_. , . , , , _ , . . Tewksbury. Mass. 

Jt pas just leaked out-ihat the real reason Harvard refused to LL.D. the un- 
dersigned was that he had announced his intention of indorsing “ Jets and 
Flashes " as a text-book to all the schools of the Bay State. 

PRESIDENTIAL MANSION. 

, r „ _ T , Washington, D; C. - 

My Dear Enrique: — I ve no longer any aspirations for a second term. Since 
the publication of your new volume of grimaces, politics, tome, has become 
as flat as a defeated candidate’s pocketbook You have earned a cabinet po- 
sition and would get it, but I can’t coax either Folger or Brewster to resign. 

Affictionately, CHET. 


-Q 


[BY CABLE ! 


Marquis Tseng, the Chinese Ambassador, informed the editor of Gaulois 
that a hitch had occurred in the negotiations between France and China bu t 
he hoped for a pacific solution of the difficulty as soon as “ Jets and Flashes ’ ’ 
brightened up the glowering war cloud. 










































































































































































































































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